The Wolf Pack
by Briana Rose
Summary: In OotP, Sirius makes reference to Umbridge drawing up anti-werewolf laws. What if Umbridge hated werewolves for a different reason than the one Sirius presents? What if she wanted them for her own selfish goals? Features a pre-Hogwarts Lupin. Ch10 now up
1. The D Umb Act

Disclaimer: I do not own particular characters and places mentioned below.

Author's note: This is my first story, it's from Lupin's POV and it's set probably in between the first and third books. I hope you like it!

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Chapter I

The D. Umb. Act

"Ah, the thrill of defeat, it's exciting, isn't it Remus?"

Lupin looked at his drinking companion and raised his eyebrows. "Exciting, Alan? I don't know why you would call it that." 

Alan tried to look back at him as seriously as he could, though he looked as if he wanted to grin a little. "I didn't say it was _good_, I just meant that it's at least somewhat exhilarating, that's all. Of course I'm as down as the rest of you are, but still, it does give something to break the torpor, doesn't it?"

"Oh, shut it Alan," said his sister Aurelia, sounding very surly and taking a swig of her drink. 

Seven werewolves sat in a pub, getting themselves thoroughly inebriated (except Lupin, whom they dubbed "the designated Apparator") and going over their future prospects gloomily.

It had started a few months before when they had gone to the Ministry to get the potion they needed to make themselves safe for the coming full moon. The Wolfsbane Potion was so highly complex that most potion stores did not carry the ingredients, so the Ministry provided the werewolves with their "monthly fix," as Alan liked to call it. It had been like this for awhile now, getting on four years (that was roughly 48 full moons) and all was actually going well for most of them, until a few months previous to that.

That was when they all had met Dolores Umbrigde, who, they all agreed, truly was the spawn of Hell.

"Or worse than that," Aurelia had interjected gloomily, and Lupin was inclined to agree.

Lupin had arrived at the Ministry that fateful day in July feeling rather optimistic. He had a new job, in Flourish & Blotts (Flourish had retired and Blotts thought himself too old to run the store without help), and while it wasn't the most exciting or well paid job it did do the trick and it did give him plenty of reading time. And it was preferable to doing other things. Nothing, for instance. He'd gone up to the fourth level and found his fellows gathered around the desk, muttering worriedly to each other. They appeared to be so immersed in the piece of parchment they had all gathered around that they didn't even look up as he arrived. 

"Hello," he'd said. "What is it?"

Aurelia turned to look at him and looked at a cross between being very angry and very upset. "Read this," she said, shoving it towards him.

The heading at the top of the parchment said in a flowing script:

Werewolf Protection Act

Lupin looked up at Aurelia. "That doesn't sound good."

"Keep reading," she said grimly.

He did. 

__

It has been determined that the current standards placed in order to preserve safety from and for werewolves are inadequate. Therefore we propose to tighten security measures by adding several new ones that are as follows:

Lupin read with growing horror the host of things being proposed, which included "notification to the current employer of the werewolf in question as to the aforementioned's condition," and "A register of all werewolves in the area open to the public." Open to the public. That would be lovely, thought Lupin bitterly.

At the very bottom of the parchment it said:

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All persons who resist the jurisdiction of this bill are subject to imprisonment.

This bill has been submitted by Dolores Jane Umbridge

Underneath was her curly signature.

"Have any of you heard of this woman before?" asked Aurelia.

"No, I haven't, and frankly I'm a little disappointed I have to now, it seems like," said Alan.

"I haven't either," said Marie, a small witch whose voice was as wispy as her hair.

"Nor I," said Maylor, Marie's husband, a tall thick wizard with a very strong jaw.

"Remus?"

Lupin shook his head. He was still staring at the paper, frowning, his brow knit.

"I have," said a hoarse voice from behind them.

They all turned around, even Lupin, who was surprised to see this strange man talking.

Adams, the speaker, was a surly sort of wizard. While the others had formed at least some sort of bond with each other over the years, Adams had remained detached and unfriendly, never offering to go out for drinks or to dinner with any of his fellows. He had had a fairly high up chair in the Wizengamot before he'd received his bite.

"She works at the Wizengamot, some secretary to Fudge or other. I knew her before…." He trailed off. There was no need to say before what, they knew what he meant. "Anyway, I never liked her too much, bit of a bitch, really."

"Well, that's obvious," muttered Alan.

"I suppose this hasn't been passed yet?" asked Lupin quietly.

"No, but it's likely it will. Umbridge is fairly well connected, I know, and she's drawn up a healthy bit of support for it," said Adams. (Adams had never said more than two words to Lupin before.)

There was a silence between all of them as they stood there, unsure of what to say to each other.

Aurelia turned to look at Lupin. "If this does pass, Remus, I'll probably lose my job. I'm on thin ice as it is, asking for all these days off…."

Remus nodded, feeling he'd probably be in the same situation as her if it did pass. Sighing, he turned to Adams. "Surely you could speak to these people, they are your former colleagues."

Adams narrowed his eyes and scowled. "If I was in good standing with any of these people, Lupin, I would still be among them, would I not?"

Aurelia scowled back at him. "Well, we're so sorry, but you're among us now, aren't you? And don't scowl at Remus just because you're such a surly git, it's not his fault this damn bill is here."

At that highly tense moment the Ministry witch came up and told them their potions were ready. They filed into the back room, where there were a dozen goblets smoking faintly on the table, giving the room a somewhat steamy appearance. They all grabbed one.

"Cheers, eh?" said Maylor.

"Cheers," they all rumbled.

"I was thinking," said Alan thoughtfully. "We need a name for this bill, a proper one, don't you think?"

"I suppose…."

"I propose naming it after it's author, the D. Umbridge Act," said Alan earnestly. "Or perhaps the D. Umb Act for short." He paused. "You get it?"

"You think of that yourself, Callard?" said Simon, a somewhat callous young man.

Alan looked a little hurt.

"Oh, leave him alone," said Aurelia exasperatedly. "If the only way we can get back at this horrid Umbridge woman is by calling her juvenile nicknames we might as well cling to them."

"That's the spirit, love."

And after that, before the werewolves could really do much about it, the D. Umb Act passed. (Alan's name had just stuck.) Mr. Blotts fired Lupin, saying perhaps he "would do better elsewhere," and Aurelia and Alan also lost their jobs at the wizard pub in Whitechapel.

It was under these rather dire circumstances that Adams died.


	2. Blunt, To Say the Least

Disclaimer: I don't own the Harry Potter characters (obviously)

A/N: Thanks to the reviewers. You guys rock my socks off!

_Chapter 2_

_Blunt, To Say the Least_

"It's not my fault," said Aurelia flatly.

"Yes it is," retorted Lupin, getting as close to argumentative as he ever would. "If you hadn't sent that letter…."

"Well, I happen to think it's better than doing nothing!" she cried. "I mean, what else were we to do? I don't want to spend the rest of my life like this, Remus, and you don't either!"

"I wasn't arguing on the justness of it, I meant that the way you've taken isn't going to help at all. She's just going to come and watch and report back to all her nasty little friends how nasty we are and nothing will get better."

Aurelia scoffed and shook her head.

They were on the balcony in Lupin's flat discussing an owl Aurelia had received recently.

The balcony was the only part of his flat Lupin really liked, it had a very good view of London, especially at night like this, when the moon was barely there (that was how Lupin liked it) and some of the stars were able to shine feebly through the pollution being given off by the city.

"I suppose you're going to tell me off now and send me to my room, is that right, Remus?"

"Yes, that's it," he replied. Then he sighed. "I suppose there's no use complaining about it, what's done is done." There was a pause. "What did you say in the letter again?"

Aurelia rolled her eyes like the impatient little imp she could be sometimes. "I _told_ you already, I asked her who she thought she was kidding, this bill's not helping anyone, particularly us_._" She gave him a look that very much resembled one Alan would give, trying to look serious while wanting to grin. "Guess it might've been a little rash, 'specially some of the names I called her, but I was caught up in the heat of the moment, you know how it is," though she thought that Remus probably wasn't the type to get caught up in the heat of anything. She thought this quite bitterly, casting a sour look at him that he didn't see behind her piece of parchment.

The letter Lupin was reading said:

_Dear Miss Callard,_

_We at the Council express salutations and greetings to you and yours and thank you for taking the time to write to us here as we sure you are quite occupied at the moment with other doings. _("The sarcasm is in that, one, eh? They must know none of us have jobs," Aurelia had told him hissingly.) 

_We find it regrettable that you find such flaws in the current legislation passed to protect you and creatures such as yourself. Therefore we have decided to send a delegate to meet with you and your fellows to interview you on the situation and your views on it. The delegate will meet you at the Werewolf Support Services Desk on December 5._

_Sincerely yours,_

_Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic _

"That's the full moon, isn't it?" asked Lupin, checking a calendar he kept on the wall to show the moon phases.

"Yes, I suppose she wanted to meet all of us."

"That'll be fun, I suppose, show him what a pleasant little gang we are, hmm?" He smiled wryly.

Aurelia tilted her head inquisitively. "You're not cross with me anymore?"

"Of course not, Aurelia, I just thought of how interesting this is going to be…."

*********************************

Indeed it was, though not in the traditional sense, he supposed. 

They were all tucking into the room behind the Werewolf Support Services desk when none other than Dolores Umbridge herself arrived. They knew this because she announced it herself the first time she entered the room.

"I," she called out imperiously. "am Dolores Umbridge and I have been sent," she started pacing now, casting a critical eye over all twelve of them. "to interview you on the grievances you posses with the Werewolf Protection Act." She stopped pacing now, and stared at all of them. The facial expressions of all the werewolves was varied. There was outrage (Aurelia), disgust (Alan), and a severe raising of eyebrows from Lupin. She reminded him of a fat pet canary his old crazy aunt had kept, for it had had the quality of puffing its chest out in the same manner Umbridge was doing at the moment. He supposed it was in some vain effort to show superiority, though it was plain to Lupin at least that the woman was no less than terrified of all of them. Scanning the crowd of them, she seemed to decide that Lupin's look of surprise was the least threatening of them all. 

"You! What is your name!" she barked. It was a question, but it sounded more like a command.

Lupin was one of those people who could create a very pronounced arc with their eyebrows when they wanted to, which was what he was doing now. "I'm Remus Lupin, it's a, um…." Just what it exactly "it" was the other werewolves and Umbridge never found out, for she cut him off before he could say much else.

"I see! I'm to find your views on the current situation!" She paused. "Well?"

Lupin was caught off-guard. _Blunt, _he thought, _is an understatement for this one._

"Well! Werewolf, I'm talking to you!"

When she said this in that particular tone it definitely fanned the flames of the hatred Lupin had been feeling for the past six months. "Well, it's bloody unjust, isn't it?"

Umbridge, it turned out, could also arch her eyebrows rather spectacularly, for she did so now. "I see. Could you be more specific," she said, while sounding very much like she doubted he had the mental capacity to be able to.

"Well, we can't even get a job! I mean--." He hadn't meant to sound so desperate, even though it very well described their current situation very well_._

"I see. Anything else?"

"Well, yes, I mean, that register. We prefer to keep this, um, _private._ You know?"

She looked as though she didn't, for she surveyed him sternly. "The register is there for yours and our safety."

"_But were not unsafe._"

That had been Aurelia. She looked nearly foaming at the mouth now, Lupin had never seen her that mad before, and frankly she was a little scary.

Umbridge looked even more severe, but she said in a very syrupy voice, "You'd be Miss Callard, wouldn't you?"

"Yes, and--,"

"Miss Callard, the last time I checked on a full moon you turned into a seven foot tall beast, is that about accurate?"

"Yes, but the potion--,"

"The potion cannot change the state of your being, Miss Callard," she said, sweeter still, "even it can change your mind, you are still quite dangerous, and as the Wolfsbane Potion is such a new discovery, many still remain unconvinced--,"

"Well they're wrong!" said Aurelia, and several of the other wolves nodded in agreement.

"You didn't let me finish, Miss Callard," said Umbridge dangerously. 

"Well, we're no more dangerous as wolves than we are as people!"

"To many, that isn't much of a comfort," she replied, looking as though she thoroughly agreed with these people. "Therefore, the procedures are widely accepted, and in fact I've seen little opposition to the new bill --,"

"Except from us," said Alan. "And isn't that what it's really about?" 

'Yes, and," added Simon, "It's not like a werewolf has ever done anything to any of those?" More murmurs of assent.

"Well, I'm sorry, but the majority has spoken, and I suggest you all get on with your lives!" she exclaimed, now looking as though had offended her, and, with a mighty swish of her robes, left.

The werewolves stood there for a moment, very surprised. Then, Adams, letting out a noise of disgust, went forward and grabbed a goblet of the smoking potion.

"What did I tell you, eh?" he asked grimly, taking a swallow, screwing up his face and muttering, "disgusting…."

"Do you mean the potion, Umbridge, or both?" asked Alan, also grabbing a goblet. 

"A composite of the two of them, but does this potion taste a little fouler than usual to you?"

Alan swished some around in his mouth and said thoughtlessly as the others grabbed goblets, "No worse than normal. Why?"

Adams shrugged. "No reason."

It was precisely five seconds following that he keeled over.

_*********************************_

Lupin had somewhat fuzzy memories of that afternoon, all he remembered was Adams writhing in agony on the floor, his foaming potion spilled around him, his mouth open and gasping.

"Get some help!" he remembered shouting, and someone had run out in the hall calling for assistance.

It was too late, however. By the time someone had got there he was dead. Lupin didn't notice until after Adams had been taken away that he had been kneeling in the spilled potion and that the knees of his robes had burned through.

He had wandered away from the scene with Aurelia, who seemed lost in shock. 

"I—I don't understand. What happened?"

Lupin shook his head. "Looked like poison, didn't it? But the only way…." He trailed off. The potion maybe? But if the potion had been poisoned all of them would've died. That didn't make sense.

"That Umbridge woman, every time we hear of her we get trouble, don't we?" asked Alan faintly.

Alan's words rang a bell somewhere in Lupin's head. They were in the Atrium by then, but Lupin sped off back to the lifts.

"Remus, where are you going?" 

"Forgot my watch, wait for me up front!"

Recently, Lupin's great-uncle Adolphus had died. Great-uncle Adolphus had never been overly affectionate for Lupin, in fact, he had never really talked to him much, but nevertheless he was family and Lupin had received in the settlement a rather nice old watch that screamed at you loudly when you were running late. Somewhat of a nuisance, but Lupin supposed it might be worth something and had brought it to show to Maylor, who was something of an appraiser. Goodness knows he could use the money. In the hustle of the meeting, however, he'd left it behind. He was still trying to process everything that had happened when he heard voices from inside the half-open door. He almost went in, but among the voices was a sickly sweet one. He peeked in as much as he dared. Dolores Umbridge and another man he did not know were talking in hushed voices. Wishing that he had James' old Invisibility Cloak so he could get closer, he strained to hear.

"…Glad you haven't managed to bungle up the whole operation, I was certain when you failed with the potion…," her voice became a light hiss now, so Lupin could not hear it. The other man was muttering something that sounded like apologies. Umbridge hissed at him to shut up. "Did you manage to nick the personal item at least?"

"Yes," said the man and held something up.

Lupin recognized it by the glittering diamonds on the face. It was his watch.

"You're sure it's his? Where did you find it?"

"The table. I think Adams would be the only one who could afford something like this, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes, yes, of course, the rest are poor as rats. Very well, this shall suffice, along with his blood. You may go, Butler."

Lupin just had time to get out of the way before the man came out. When he was sure that both of them were gone, he sped off toward the lifts.

************************************

Later that night, several hundred miles away, a fire burned fiercely. Behind it lay Adams. He was dead, and behind him still stood a man cloaked in darkness. This man held a vial of Adams' blood and also Lupin's watch. His deep voice reverberated like a gong through the heavens, and several hundred miles away Remus Lupin, a werewolf at the time, awoke.

**THANK YOU FOR READING, PLEASE REVIEW**


	3. Poison in the Potion

Disclaimer: Don't own nothing, you know the drill, yada, yada, yada. 

A/N: Thanks to the reviewers (do I detect a pattern here?), it's so nice of you to drop by. Your comments are much appreciated! 

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Chapter 3

The Poison in the Potion

It was an odd sensation at first, for there seemed to be a voice calling out right next to him.

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Arcturus Adams… it whispered very quietly.

Always a light sleeper, Lupin woke very abruptly. He stretched his wolf body to its fullest extent, thinking that would probably be enough to scare anyone off. But the voice called out again. 

His mind, at the moment, while not dangerous as it would be without his potion, was still very much a wolf's. He growled loudly and sprang forward, expecting something, _anything_, to be there. But there wasn't. Wishing that he was in a state to use his wand, he looked around, trying to smell, to hear something, but when the voice spoke again it sounded, to his great horror, very much like it was coming from in his_ own head._

You must let go, my friend, for you are dead, you must let go of your soul. Come to me. The voice spoke in a coaxing way that showed very clearly it wanted something…

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My soul, thought Lupin feverishly. What was happening? The gears in his sleeping brain were turning very slowly. 

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Arcturus Adams…

Lupin stopped in mid-thought, confused. _That's not me,_ he thought frantically. _What do you want?_

The voice hesitated very slightly. _You are not the one I seek…who are you?_

The werewolf kept perfectly still. He tried to summon what he knew of Occlumens, which, at best, was sparse. Nevertheless, he worked very hard, supposing it was much more difficult to perform it as a wolf. Magical infiltration of the mind, such as this, was always seen as something to be feared. Either that, or he was going crazy, which, he thought fairly, was a very probable occurrence. 

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Very well, said the voice. _I must leave, for I am unwanted inside your being. But I shall return. Make no mistake. I shall return._

And, with a cool breeze, almost like a breath, the voice was gone, and so was Lupin in a way. He nearly collapsed, for the effort in which he had put into shut out his mind had been very straining. He was so tired, that no matter how he tried, he could not stay awake.

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In the morning, he thought sleepily. _I'll change back in the morning, and then I'll figure what that, that _thing_ was._

But in the morning, by the time he had transformed, he wasn't sure it had been anymore than a dream.

**********************************************

Aurelia awoke the next morning, transforming. While wolf faces were hard up to show human emotion, if they could hers would be grimacing. While she was used to this by now, she'd been doing it every month since she was a girl, she still disliked it. It did not bother Alan or Remus as much as it bothered her, or at least they had accustomed themselves to it better. This was surprising, because as children Alan had always been the one who ran crying to Mother at the littlest bruise or bump. But Aurelia couldn't stand the tearing of her skin, the sprouting on the hair, the sharpening of her teeth; it still felt so extremely alien to her. 

Often she liked to joke that turning into a werewolf was a bit like a second monthly cycle for her, like some travesty of menstruation. (She knew which one she preferred.) An old joke but a good one, she thought fondly. Remus had always liked it….

That put her in mind of him. She wanted to see him, she had to talk about the death, it was confusing her too much.

She hadn't even _liked _Adams that much. He was a bit sour-tempered, obviously, and he'd never been very nice to her. So why did she feel so bad about his death? Not just generally, but on a personal level. It confused her immensely and she knew she could talk about it with Remus. He would probably be feeling much more clear-headed now that the full moon had passed, she knew she did. So she sent her owl on ahead to ask him to go walking with her that afternoon. She didn't really ask as much as just told him, he never said no. She had to take the initiative to ask him to go somewhere, although, because if he did he would always invite Alan to come with them when she preferred them to be alone.

Sometimes Remus just doesn't get it.

Shaking her head fondly, she made breakfast.

*****************************************************

Remus also made breakfast that morning, just some toast with some jam, thinking. His times as a wolf were always a bit hazy, even with the potion, and at night after he'd been asleep…at any rate, his memory of the voice was scarce, so when he met up with Aurelia that afternoon he didn't mention anything. She had the quality of being very dramatic and in something so odd like this she would probably fly totally off the handle. Plus there was the fact that even he wasn't entirely sure what had happened.

She was quite caught up in the events of the previous day, babbling excitedly.

"It was poison, wasn't it?" she asked him. "I'm nearly sure of it."

"You're positive?"

"Well, it's like you said, it looked an _awful_ _lot_ like poisoning."

"Yes, but I could be wrong--,"

"Of course you could be, it's more than highly probable, actually, but you'll remember that I, like you, was kneeling in Adams' spilled potion."

"So?"

Aurelia sighed exasperatedly. "Come now, Remus, you're not stupid. Were the knees of robes not burned through by the time you stood?"

Lupin's brow creased. "So they were…I hadn't noticed…the potion wouldn't do that, would it?"

"Of course not. It must've been the poison in the goblet that caused it, wouldn't you say?"

Lupin nodded. "I think I remember why I keep you around, Aurelia."

"The brains, is it?"

"Yes…"

"And my pretty face, of course. How could you forget that, Remus?"

"Of course, how could I? Daft of me."

"Really."  
"But if it really was the poison in the potion, we all would've ended up on the floor like poor Adams," Remus pointed our after a long pause.

"Not if the poison was added _after _the potion was in the goblet."

"You're not suggesting…"

"Oh, come on, Remus, _she's_ foul enough to do something like that, isn't she?"

"Yes, I suppose she could be behind it somehow, it would make sense," Remus admitted. "But she must not have been after anyone in particular."

"Why do you say that?"

"She couldn't have known which goblet Adams was going to take, could she? She just wanted one of us to die…" He looked thoughtful while Aurelia looked fearful.

"Why would she want one of us to die?" she whispered as they sat down at a park bench together.

"I imagine because of the only thing we all have in common…."

Deep inside, Aurelia shivered, thinking of last night and her transformation. 

"We're werewolves," she whispered, more to herself than him.

"Well, thank you for pointing that out to me, love, and here I thought I was turning into a vicious animal every month because of my stomach flu." He was being sarcastic but his words lacked a bite most people had when they spoke in this manner. Nevertheless, it angered her.

"Fine, Remus, sorry that you can't understand one bloody emotion in your whole frickin being." She crossed her arms over her chest huffily.

Turning to look at her, he frowned. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing!" she snarled. "Come on, let's go home." And she stood up and hurried toward the flat.

At first Lupin just sat, dumbfounded, bewildered as to what he had done to provoke such an outburst. They had been bickering less and less in the last couple of months and Lupin thought that they had been getting along fairly well. 

__

Wrong again, he told himself slyly as ran to catch up to her. When he did, he saw she was crying.

Aurelia did not cry very often, but when she did it was quite a loud affair. Not pausing to ask anything, he put his arm around her and steered her back home. They caught quite a few stares from the passing Muggles, but Lupin didn't notice and Aurelia definitely didn't. Her face was buried in her gloved hands and she was sobbing quite profusely.

Finally they arrived at his flat and she calmed down. 

"I'm sorry Remus," she moaned. "Being a bit…"

"Melodramatic?" he finished for her.

"Yes that's it, it's just…I feel very sad for some reason."

"Well, when people witness a death it can often leave them emotionally scarred, and I suppose to melodramatic people like yourself…." He was teasing again, but this time she laughed.

"Yes, but, the thing is, Adams and I weren't exactly what you'd call best mates, would you?"

"Not in the slightest," he assured her, thinking if her confrontation with him the day they'd heard of the D. Umb. Act.

"But I feel bad, feel like I should be out there doing _some_thing."

Lupin looked thoughtful. "That, I suppose, is a sort of cult mentality. We had a common bond with Adams before he died; we were in the some boat as him. Now we feel like we should be _avenging _him, if you want to go to extremes."

"Oh, I do," she assured him furtively, and for a second they were quiet as they sat together on the sofa, staring out the window, for it had started raining suddenly, a real downpour. 

He had a comforting sort of arm, she thought, and that was not being sentimental, for it was quite true. She huddled against him, she could feel his heart beating in his chest.

"It's really not a cult mentality," she observed finally. "That's not how I think of it. And don't move," she told him after he had shifted slightly to get a better view of her. "I like this spot."

"What do you think of it as then?" he inquired.

Aurelia thought for a minute, pondering the words. She could still hear his heart beating. 

"It's a _pack_ mentality, that's what it is," she said at long last. "We're a pack and one of our own has been hurt, and we want to go after them." She moved her head finally to see his face, lined but somehow perfectly smooth. "That's what it is, isn't it?"

"That's it exactly," said Lupin, resting a hand on her very thick burgundy hair. 

"Which is why we're going to look into this," said Aurelia, kissing him softly on the cheek.

"Right on again," he told, surprising her by kissing her back.

"We'll go back to the Ministry tomorrow. Inquire on the whereabouts of our friend the deceased."

"Mhm." 

"You've never let me in before," observed Aurelia casually as she kissed him again, this time on the lips. 

"What d'you mean?"

"You've never really noticed before. Me, I mean."

"Of course I have, I've known you for nearly four years."

"That's not what I meant. You've always been, _detached_, that's the word for it." He did not comment or argue on the truth of this statement and instead kept kissing her. "You've never been part of a pack before, have you Remus?" she asked.

He thought for a minute, then said, "No, actually. I did have somewhat of a pack, though it's nearly a decade ago now."

"I see," said Aurelia, as they rolled over and lay down and she kicked off her shoes. "Mind telling me about it?"

"Ah, you see, we'd have to stop kissing for me to tell that story," he told her.

"Nonsense, we've been snogging and carrying on this conversation for the past five minutes."

"Yes, and while that is somewhat of a talent of yours, I'm afraid the mood of my story is somewhat depressing and it may put a damper on the mood of the moment." 

Aurelia stopped unbuttoning his shirt and thought a moment. Remus kissing her and Remus opening up somewhat about his past life were both in of themselves rare occurrences and she wasn't sure which one she wanted more. Well, she was sure which one she wanted more, but she knew one was probably better for him to let go of. Taking a deep breath, she got off of him. "All right. Tell me."

He seemed taken by surprise, but did not hesitate. He also sat up and redid his shirt. Clearing his throat, he began.

"You didn't go to Hogwarts, did you Aurelia?"

She shook her head. "No, my parents didn't want us to, well, they didn't think it good for us to go. We lived on the countryside, you see, and father was a Muggle farmer. So my mother, the witch, taught me and Alan. We—we were nine when we got the bite."

Remus nodded. "Well, we lived in London, me and my parents, and when I got the bite we moved to the countryside also, to get away from the people. I was very young when I was bitten, I remember we had been in the woods; my father was researching something for his new book. He was a magizoologist, and an author." He stopped to think. "I think we got lost in the forest or something, I don't remember very clearly, but the forest we were in was obviously very dangerous, more so than one we had planned to go to. My father got it mixed up with another one. He felt very guilty afterwards."

"Poor man."

"Yes…well, eventually, it came time for me to go to Hogwarts and…I got accepted." He paused again, as though recalling an extremely pleasant memory. "I'd never been so happy in my life, for the headmaster had set up things to keep me safe while I attended, things that would ensure that no one would get hurt while I was there."

Slowly he sank into the story of he three friends, the Animagi, the Whomping Willow, the Shrieking Shack, it all came out naturally, as if he'd been yearning to tell somebody this his whole life. 

"You've heard of Harry Potter, of course?" he asked her.

"Of course. He's not…"

"Yes, he was James and Lily's son. Well, he still is, I imagine. Lives in Surrey with some relatives, last I heard."

There was a silence.

"So James and Lily," she began tentatively. "They both—they were both…"

"Killed, yes. By Voldemort."

He felt her tense slightly at the name, but she didn't say anything for a while.

"What about Sirius? And Peter?"

"Maybe even worse than what happened to Lily and James." As quickly as he could, he told her about what Sirius had done…to James, to Lily, to little Harry, and, of course, to Peter. He'd killed Peter.

"So, he's in Azkaban, and James and Peter are both…dead." There was an odd finality about how she spoke. The sky, which had been growing steadily darker as they had been talking, was lit up suddenly by lightening and then another deafening clap of thunder.

"So that's the sob story of my life," he said finally. "Poor little Remus, all alone, got no one, eh?" He grinned slightly, though she didn't.

"You've got me," she whispered very quietly, settling her head against his chest again. She didn't want to see his reaction, for she was unsure of what it would be.

He didn't say anything, just stared at the dark red of her head, as if just seeing her for the first time. "Yes. Yes I do."

They spread themselves on the couch again and didn't talk much for the rest of the night.

********************************************************* 

An owl was waiting for Dolores Umbridge on her desk that morning. She scowled at it, for it had left some of it's breakfast on her files, files she really needed, the Minister was telling her almost daily that he would need them…

Sighing, she relieved the barn owl of its burden. 

All owls should be hanged their ankles along with the werewolves, she thought vengefully. "Go on, shoo, go take a dump on someone else's paper."

The owl seemed to be able to read her mind, or at least the expression on her face, for it nipped her finger very hard before it took off.

"Ouch! Damn owl." She then chided herself for being so loud, for she wanted to read this letter in peace, she didn't desire people reading over her shoulder. Unfurling the parchment, she looked over her message:

__

Didn't work. Meet me at the Muggle park, same time. 

"Dammit!" she said very loudly, then looked around. Her desk was in the anteroom of the Minister's office and there was very long line of people waiting to get in to the office. They all stopped talking and stared at her.

"Oh, um, sorry, Quidditch team lost." She pointed to the sports section of the_ Daily Prophet _that lay open on her desk_. _She grinned sheepishly at the lot of them, and they all turned back to their business. 

Wishing that it had been the simple matter of her team losing, she got to work.

***********************************************************

A few hours later, it was around noon, a man dressed in a long trenchcoat was wandering seemingly aimlessly in a Muggle park.

Remus Lupin was also in the park that afternoon, for Aurelia was still sleeping, he could not rouse her. He was, at the moment, contemplating getting a job being hot dog vendor here in the square. Less of a tight work schedule, he supposed, he could always get the full moon off, and he'd always liked the smell of mustard for some reason. It was then that he noticed a short squat figure. He saw her face before she hurried to the tree where the shady man was loitering.

Magic folk didn't come to this park very often, so it puzzled him what she was doing. So, going up to the real hot dog vendor in the park, he bought a hot dog and tried to eavesdrop. He normally thought it exceedingly rude to eavesdrop, but in these circumstances he thought the subject most definitely deserved it. 

Umbridge and the man were talking very low again, so Lupin pretended to tie his show to buy time. As he listened, he grew sure that the man was the same he'd seen talking to her before in the Ministry.

"The watch wasn't his…we didn't get the right one…" the man mumbled, leaning against a bench and lighting a cigarette.

Umbridge's normally pale face grew red and she barely bothered to keep her voice down. "Who was it that you contacted?"

"Another one…think his name was Lupin, according to the Speaker."

After hearing his own name he turned his back on them and pretended he was just Muggle eating a hot dog in deep thought, listening for anything all the while. Unfortunately for him, a large loud group of American tourists came upon the hot dog stand at that moment. Their chatter and laughter drowned out any further conversation between Umbridge and this other man. 

"Well, Adams is out, we couldn't get by something else of his, his family has sealed off the whole house," said the other man decisively. "But apparently the Speaker has another idea."

"And what's that?" Umbridge spewed angrily. 

"He wouldn't say, much too tired when I left, but I think it has to do with your lupine friend over there." He pointed to Lupin's back. The front was glaring almost malevolently at the group of tourists, who showed no signs of abating their chatter or going somewhere else. Umbridge saw who it was also and grinned, and they both hurried away from their clandestine meeting.

****************************************************

That night at dinner Alan proclaimed what he had been thinking nearly since birth.

"I," he said grandly to all of them, "Alan Callard, your friend and brother, am, indeed, a genius."

The entire table turned to look at him, all somewhat bemused. Marie and Maylor had invited Alan, Aurelia, and Lupin to dinner. Marie had just started dishing out the casserole.

"What is it you have then, Alan?" asked his sister, glaring at him. He always liked putting in a show too much. "Cut to the chase, will you?"

"Of course, of course, my sister never had any patience, did she? Well, you see, I went to the Ministry again today."

"Without us?" asked Aurelia, acting offended.

"Well, thought I'd just have a poke around, nothing too heavy, you understand. Well, as I was there, I saw Umbridge. She was hurrying out, her cloak was nearly hanging off of her, she looked, all in all, very worried. And then, it occurred to me. She wouldn't be at her desk, why shouldn't I go and have a peek around?"

"Why would you want to do that?"

Alan shrugged. "M'not sure, made sense at the time. Anyway, I found the way to her office, told the man at the front I had to speak with her. He let me in, looked a bit sleepy, actually, maybe that's why the security was rather lax, but anyway, I went to her desk. There were quite a lot of people around, and there was nothing remarkably interesting around _except _this." He pulled out of his bag an aged magazine. "Take a look at what our dear friend Dolores has been reading up about." With an air of cloying smugness, he flipped it open to a marked section.

The title on the top of the yellowing page was: 

****

The Mystical Principles of Werewolves

Lupin took the magazine from Alan and read what followed. " '_Long has it been suspected (but never proven) that the werewolf, a creature often demonized and feared, could in fact be one of the most powerful magical creatures on the face of the planet. Their physical strength, while quite great, does not come even remotely close to that of a dragon or other sizable monsters, however. A werewolf's power is seen as "more internal than anything else," says magical theorist Bayford Billings. "It's unknown what the usefulness of this could be, as it is a very modern theory and we haven't gotten much chance to test anything as of yet" This is because no werewolf to date has volunteered for any sort of experimentation'" _Lupin looked around the stunned table. "That's mildly unsettling, isn't it? I don't wonder why no werewolf's ever volunteered."

Aurelia grabbed it from him now. "When they say power…what the hell does that mean?"

"I'd imagine," said Maylor. "That it's a bit like dragon blood, isn't it? Could have healing powers. Perhaps give strength, intelligence, something like that. Does it say anymore, Aurelia?"

"Nothing," she replied. "Goes off on something about out-of-control kneazles after that." 

"What would Umbridge want this for?" asked Marie, sitting down finally. She looked distinctly worried.

"I've got an inkling," said Lupin, and he and Aurelia told them of the former's encounter at the Ministry the previous day and at the park that morning.

"They were talking about _you,_ Remus?" asked Maylor, looking even more worried than his wife.

"I think so. But I'm not sure why," admitted Lupin.

"I expect you'll find out," Alan pointed out.

****

THANK YOU FOR READING, PLEASE REVIEW!!


	4. Christmas on the Hill

Disclaimer: I don't own the HP character(s), places and themes that will appear in this story; you all know that, because I certainly don't have any money from this! I'm actually the Don Carleone of babysitting in suburban Minnesota, that's where I gets me moola. But that's a whole 'nother story in itself, so on with the one at hand.

_Chapter 4_

_Christmas on the Hill_

_"Oh come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant…"_

A house in a suburb outside of London was packed with people, all singing in a rather haphazard fashion. The house itself was very small with an almost grubby exterior to it. Inside, however, it was very warm and snug. The parlor where the guests sat was probably better suited to less people; a few were seated on the floor around a great piano.

            _"Oh come ye, oh come ye to Bethlehem…"_

This was a few weeks after the full moon, which mattered very much to the residents of the house, of course. That December London had experienced almost no snow, it had simply rained continuously, turning the streets wet and slippery and what little snow there was to ugly, dirty, brown slush. 

            _"Come and behold Him, born the king of angels…"_

            The woman playing the piano was a hard-looking one, she was very thin and wiry and her face had an almost jutting effect to it. One could argue that the only feature on her that contained any elegance at all was the way that her long fingers glided over the piano keys. Two men sat on the floor next to the bench she sat on. One looked like a younger male version of the woman, and the other was a man with graying brown hair and an exhausted face. He did, however, look very happy, and when a small middle-aged woman handed him a tray of drinks he took out his wand and used it to pass them around to everyone.

            There were various other people in the parlor. They looked, all in all, very shabby, perhaps in not the best of health. 

            Finally, the song ended and the woman on the piano played a little flourish, as if for punctuation. After that the host appeared to be making a toast to a deceased compatriot of all of them. They raised their glasses and drank.

            Several hours later, it was very dark by then, the people left the house one by one until the only guests left were the sister and brother and the other man. While the brother and sister were in the dining room arguing over the turkey wishbone, the host, a thick older man, sidled up to the other man, who had remained silent, watching the two siblings arguing. 

            "Remus," said the host, "I didn't want to ask in front of the others, but you did say at dinner last week you were going to go to the Ministry. What did they say about Adams?"

            The other man gave a sigh that made him appear even more exhausted. "They assume that there was just a simple malfunction with the potion."

            "Then they don't think…"

            "They see no evidence of foul play."

            "But the potion…that doesn't make sense, we didn't get sick at all from it, just poor Adams."

            "Yes, I did try and point that out to them, but they didn't seem to think anything otherwise. Bit tight-lipped about the whole thing, really."

            "No surprise. You've been all right? Nothing to fishy's come your way?"

            "No…" he replied, thinking about that strange voice he'd heard in that dream…a dream, of course, that's what it was. Just a dream.

            "But listen, Maylor, I wanted to talk to you. Surely you must agree that this was no accident."

            The older man gave the younger a very shrewd look, but nodded.

            "Well, then, Maylor, are you any good at potion brewing? Because I was always utter rubbish at it." 

            Another  pause. "Remus, you wouldn't remember the werewolf bill, would you?"

            "I try not to."

            "Well, you'll remember it specifically states that the werewolves _must _get the Wolfsbane from the Ministry. They think it's, what was it now, _unsafe_ if we get it anywhere else. They want to ensure it's going to work."

            "Yes, but surely you agree that we shouldn't just sit around waiting for one of us to get poisoned again."

            "I also think that we shouldn't have to all end up in Azkaban! Remus, if we don't show up you know that's what they'll do, that Umbridge woman is completely and utterly crazy." He pounded his thick fist on the table for emphasis.

            "At least we agree on one thing, then. Listen, I believe I have an idea that'll keep us out of Azkaban and Death's untimely clutches."

            "How's that?"

            "We'll just brew some ourselves and then when we go to the Ministry we'll just dump out the stuff they give us. That way, we'll have our, um, _fix_, as Alan likes to call it, and none of us will end up on the floor like old Adams."

            Maylor looked thoughtful. "We've good timing then, if I remember correctly Wolfsbane takes a week to brew, if you can get the ingredients."

            "That will pose challenge, won't it? But you'll do it?"

            Maylor grave expression gave away slightly to something of a smirk. "I suppose."

            "Excellent," replied the younger man, sounding satisfied. "I'll go to the Apothecary tomorrow, get everything you need, all right?"

            Another look of concern materialized on Maylor's face. "Remus, I don't mean to bring this up, but as the ingredients are so rare, they're very, well, very _expensive._"

            "I'll manage," said Lupin, a clipped finality in his tone. At that moment, as though perfectly timed, Aurelia called to him.

            "Remus, shall we leave? It's getting late."

            Nodding, he went into the front hall, grabbing his Muggle coat. Maylor followed him. "I shall contact you when I have all the ingredients."

            Maylor nodded, grabbing Aurelia and Alan's coats for them. "Yes. I'll get it prepared. You're sure you'll be all right?"

            "We'll manage," Aurelia told him.

            "Or die trying," said Alan, winking.

            "Oh stop it, Alan, nobody's going to _die_," Aurelia told him.

            Maylor's wife had joined the other four in the front hall. "Trying what? What are you going to do?"

            Lupin grinned. "Happy Christmas, eh?" His two companions said the same and they Apparated home.

****************************************************

There was a stone cave that sat in a rocky mountain, sheltered from the wind and rain that often hit the face. This cave had been sheltered not only from the elements but from the passage of time itself, for it contained memories and people of a very distant time when strange things had taken over the land that, things that had been driven out eventually, replaced by new customs and people, but something had kept this particular roomy cavity in the mountain untouched. What exactly it was few knew, for the residents of the village on the base of the mountain, simple Muggles, most of them, had a superstitious fear of the mountain.

            "The Folk on the Hill, they kidnap the wee ones for supper!" espoused an old granny to several small children from her front porch, who cowered in response. Though the mountain itself was fairly sizable, they villagers called it, simply, the Hill. Whether this was true no one really knew, for not many people ventured up there anymore. 

            Thankfully.

****************************************************

"You know what I would do if I had money?" asked Aurelia that night, sitting on Remus's bed.

            "Hmm?" he asked, peeking his head out of the bathroom where'd he had been brushing his teeth.

            "Get a piano. I learned it ages ago, I'd forgotten how much I like it."

            "Who taught you?"

            "My father, surprisingly. He was quite a musician."

            "Your father? He was a Muggle, wasn't he?"

            "Mhm. We lived on a farm. I really liked it there, I lived there with my father after my mother died, well, me and Alan did, then we moved here to London after he died. Met you and all that." There was a silence. "What about you?"

            Lupin disappeared briefly to spit in the sink, and then came to sit next to her. "My parents both died a few years after I left Hogwarts."

            Her eyes widened. "You never told me that."

            He shrugged. "You never asked. Anyway, I spent the years after I graduated with my friends. I've told you about that, of course. About the Order and everything." After that he had basically wandered nearly all over the globe, to Asia, Russia, the Americas, Africa, not coming back to London until four years before that. Oftentimes he grew restless, he wanted to travel more, but he unfortunately had exhausted his funds so his travelling ability was limited. He never regretted it, however. He preferred not having the money his parents had left him now after having traveled to having it but being stuck in Britain. Here everything was so damn _monotonous_, even with Aurelia here, that he often itched to get up and leave, maybe take her with him, though he had never traveled with company before, he wondered if he'd enjoy it.

            Now, however, he had to stay here, thanks to Dolores Umbridge. Thanks to a bunch of close-minded idiots like her who could wield power over somebody like some almighty scepter. And now one of the bastards wanted to hurt them. 

            He had pounded his pillow angrily many times that night before he went to sleep. He really hated going to sleep angry. He never slept well afterwards.

********************************************

He dreamed that night that he was sitting by a fire. The fire shown like a single pinprick of light in an expanse of darkness, and he stared at it fiercely, for he was afraid if that he looked away he would never find it again and would be lost in that sea of blackness. Someone was whispering in his ear, but he could not hear what it was, and he did not recognize who it was. 

            At one point, he was sure it had said, "Merry Christmas."

**Another Author's Note:** This is kind of an odd way to end a chapter, I was going for the mystique factor, I guess. Plan to have more happen in the next chapter. And the week after next is spring break, so I plan to get a few chapters done. Please review!


	5. Trapping the Wolf

Disclaimer: I don't own the HP characters, themes, and places that are liable to make an appearance below, though a great number of them are OCs. But do you know how useless it would be to sue me? The amount I make in a year wouldn't be enough to pay to fill your car at a gas station!

A/N: Thanks so much to the reviewers, because you guys constantly boost my self-esteem and get me to write. 

Several of my friends have given me a few ideas for this chapter, so thanks to them.

_ Chapter 5_

_ Trapping the Wolf_

In London it may have not been overwhelmingly cold, but up north the red line on all Muggles' thermometers was certainly low enough to get everyone thoroughly worked up. This was why Butler really hated being called up to the Hill, especially this early in the morning, but an owl had been sent ahead to him by Bridget. The Speaker wanted to, well, speak with him, and that wasn't exactly a comforting thought.

When he arrived at the top of the Hill at the entrance to the cave, Bridget stood waiting for him. Her dark hair rippled in the wind and her milky features were twisted into a grimace. She disliked the cold even more than he did. 

"He's told me to tell you to wait, he's very tired. Sleeping, he is."

Butler looked surprised. "What? Why?"

The man whom they spoke of was a very old one; Bridget would be willing to bet he was one of the oldest in the country. She wouldn't be surprised, anyway. He had been going into a trance last night (that's just what Bridget thought of them as) so it served to reason that he would be quite exhausted now, the morning after. But it was quite irregular for him to do it _now,_ of all times, a week to a full moon.

"So I assume he hasn't done it yet? The process?"

Bridget shook her head. "No, he was just testing something, I think is what he said. He said it's much harder to do when the subject's alive. But far more interesting, he said."

Dalen Butler could have cared less about that. "Listen, if we haven't got _something_ to show her soon she might back out. She's already nervous about the whole plan as it is."

"Come now, Dalen, you can convince her, can't you?"

"I can only hope. She thought she'd be able to present to the company reps by Christmas at the least. But we're not even close yet." Obviously distressed, Dalen took out a cigarette and lit it.

"That's a really filthy Muggle habit, you know that, don't you Dalen?"

"Yes, it is. I'll quit for New Years'."

"That's what you said last year."

"And yet here I am, still puffing away. Hmm. Funny how that goes, huh?"

Bridget shook her head. "The Speaker won't like that. He can always tell when you smoke, you know."

"I could care less what the Speaker likes or not."

"Do you?" asked an icy voice behind him. "I'm not surprised. Come in here, boy."

Gulping, Dalen stamped out his cigarette and went inside the cave.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

"Name," said the woman behind the desk, taking out a quill and a file.

"Remus Lupin."

"Occupation."

Remus shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "I'm…unemployed, as of late."

"Hmm." The woman marked this down. She was rather cold and impersonal and had been sent to set up the register. Umbridge had been making good on all of the things in her beloved bill.

"Location?"

Lupin gave his address, still feeling very fidgety. They were breaking the law, after all, they had no intention of taking any potion that might have come under, even for one second, the nose of Umbridge or one of her cronies. They had all managed to successfully brew the Wolfsbane. That morning, the morning before the full moon, the Ministry witch who gave them the potion had told them all that an administrator from the Department for Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures was coming to interview each of them in turn.

"For what?" Simon had asked sharply.

"That horrid register, most likely," Aurelia had said. "That's what it is, correct?" she had asked the Ministry witch, who had nodded and left them to consume their potion.

"Good thing she's very inattentive this morning," said Alan, pulling out his wand and muttering "_Evanesco_" once the door had closed behind the witch. The potion in the goblet vanished. "They're really going through with it then?"

Lupin felt another swoop of the anger he had felt since Christmas. He was very much inclined to dart out of the Ministry now before any such interview could take place, but at that moment the woman from Umbridge's office had appeared and had elected to take him into her office first, much to his chagrin.

"What is your current living status (i.e., children, spouse, significant other)?" The woman was obviously reading directly off a form.

Lupin felt a bit uncomfortable again. Aurelia had moved in with him last month around the full moon when Adams had died. "My girlfriend shares the flat with me."

The witch looked over her reading glasses at him almost reproachfully. Bit of a medieval attitude on this one, he thought.

"I'll need her name too."

Lupin felt himself growing angrier now. He was normally an exceedingly calm man, but James and Sirius had always liked to joke about him when he lost his temper. A werewolf on the rampage, they would say, which would just further incense him.

"Is it really imperative that the general wizarding public know the name of my girlfriend? Is knowing _that_ going to protect them when I go on my mad-werewolf rampage?"

The witch apparently didn't have much of a sense of humor, either. The rest of the interview was done in a comparably rushed fashion.

"So how exactly does this register work?" he asked her when the interview had been wrapped up (finally).

The woman seemed disinclined to talk to him anymore than she had to. "The register will be open to anyone who requests it."

Lupin didn't trust himself to remain in the room any longer. Before he could say any retort that might make the woman call the Department of Magical Law Enforcement on him, which was situated upstairs, the part of his head not burning with white-hot anger rushed his legs out of the room.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Outside the door, he took deep breath. He didn't like losing control like that. He very rarely got that angry, but when he did…well, while in the States he recalled hearing of a Muggle comic book character that went through much the same thing, except that Remus Lupin was not turning green at the moment. He didn't trust himself at moments like those; they made him feel vulnerable, almost like he didn't trust himself not to do something rash.

He couldn't help but wonder if that was the wolf in him, sometimes, it was growling and gnashing it yellow teeth, yearning to get out.

_Stop that_, he told himself sternly. _You're not a wolf, you're a man, so you sure as hell better start acting like one._

Sighing, he sat and waited for Aurelia.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

"Remus."

He didn't answer. 

"Remus! Listen, what's wrong with you? You've been acting funny all week. And you look pale. Well," she paused. "Paler than normal, anyway. You haven't been sleeping well. I've seen. What's wrong?"

Not all men were this odd. But then, Remus wasn't like most men, she supposed, and that wasn't counting the fact he was a werewolf. There was something else too, but she was damned if she knew what it was. 

It was about two hours before the moon rose and Aurelia was trying very hard to sleep. She wished very much that she could simply doze through the moonrise, but that was pure and utter wishful thinking. She could sooner sleep through a transformation than she could stop it from happening at all.

She was lying on the bed and she could see him sitting on the rail of the balcony that looked out into the street. He turned to look at her and smiled sardonically.

"Don't tell me, Aurelia, you never feel a little off-color around this time of month."

"I never said that. You just seem a little…_preoccupied_, that's the word."

"I'm fine."

One of the side effects of living with someone, Remus had discovered, was that the person in question had intimate knowledge of what you were feeling like most of the day, something he was not accustomed to. He wasn't sure if he wanted to tell Aurelia of the troubling dreams he'd been having lately. She didn't seem like the type to get nightmares and he didn't want her to get the impression that he did. 

The thing was, about these nightmares he tried to conceal from her, that he wasn't quite certain what it was about them that unsettled and downright frightened him. In the dreams, which resembled very much the ones he'd gotten on Christmas night, nothing much happened except that man whispering, and he still couldn't make out what the man was saying, and yet somehow, on another level, he could understand them just faintly. And what they were saying wasn't good. He could get that much anyway.

_Maybe you're turning into a Seer,_ he thought grimly, going into the bedroom and sitting on the bed next to Aurelia. _Prophetic dreams, wouldn't you say?_

Maybe. A warning of things to come. That would make sense. Though while awake he thought that a bigger threat to his being was boredom, he was getting very restless with no job, Aurelia probably felt the same as well. There truly was nothing for them to do, and it was driving him insane. 

He stood up and walked into the bedroom where Aurelia was. An hour until moonrise now. He sat on the bed and stared out the window.

"Remus." 

"Hmm?"

"I want to talk." He could feel her getting up to sit next to him, but he didn't stop staring out the window. 

"You could have picked a more opportune time, you know." 

"Yes, I know, but I, well…" she trailed off. "I feel like I should tell you something."

"Hmm?"

She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. "It's just that…well, you've been feeling very discouraged lately, I could tell, and so have I, but I just wanted to say, as clichéd and predictable as this is going to sound, but…I,"

"Yes?"

"I love you."

There was a silence. "That's clichéd and predictable?" he asked finally, more as a way to break the silence than anything else.

"Somewhat, I thought. But it's true and I just thought you ought to, to know," she finished somewhat lamely. 

"All right."

And they were silent with only 45 minutes left.

* * *

"He's ready?"

"He's ready," said Bridget in what she hoped was a reassuring voice. "He'll do it, he promised me."

"He promised. He'll have it all ready, in a bottle, I can bring it to Umbridge, she'll have the um, what's it called?"

"The essence."

"The essence, yes, she'll have it, in a bottle, no fuss, is that correct?"

Bridget smiled. "Well, I don't know about the in the bottle part."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, remember how the Speaker told you when the werewolf's alive it's much more complicated?"

"He did mention it, yes."

"Well, I guess he felt that if the subject is present he could perform it with more accuracy."

Dalen's eyes widened. "You mean _here_? On the Hill?"

"That's what he intends to do. Get the werewolf here."

"How's he going to do that?"

"Oh, stop worrying, Dalen. Everything will work out fine."

"But he's never done the extraction on a living being, has he?"

"Of course not."

"So what if he _can't_? Is he sure it's even possible?"

Bridget gave him a smirk. "Well, you can't be certain the extraction's going to work because he's alive, but you can easily remedy that, can't you? A living being can become a non-living one very easily."

"Oh. Right." After that Dalen couldn't help but feel a little sick.

"It's hard to spirit a living being hundreds of miles, you're right, Dalen, but as it's the full moon tonight…"

"What's that got to do with it?"

"Defenses, my dear boy," said Bridget wisely. "You see, you can't normally make someone come to you magically, of course, especially this far a distance. But we're transporting a werewolf at the full moon. That makes the subject somewhat weaker and more vulnerable. His defenses are down and the Speaker should have no trouble with him."

"Oh." They were silent for a period and then Dalen finally spoke. 

"What's his name again?" 

The young woman raised one thin dark eyebrow. "Remus Lupin. Why?"

Dalen shrugged, feeling more uncomfortable by the minute. "No reason."

"Hmm," said Bridget, still casting a suspicious eye over her comrade. She checked her watch. "30 minutes to moonrise."

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

"Remus? What's wrong?" 

She was looking at him with worriedly. Half and hour left and suddenly he had felt a strange spasm in his chest, causing him to gasp very suddenly.

"I'm not sure," he wheezed. He was taking very short labored breaths, still clutching his aching chest. Was he having a heart attack? That was absurd. Wolves didn't get heart attacks.

"Remus?" She was patting his back, looking worried. "Do you want me to get help?" Fifteen minutes left now.

He couldn't talk now, the pain in his chest was creeping through his whole body, reaching a pitch so that he felt his fingers clench around Aurelia's fingers.

"Remus! I'm getting help." His hand was still in a death grip around hers. She looked into his face, trying to soothe him back to calm. The look in his eyes was disconcerting, it did not look at all like Remus. "Let go. Remus, let go of me and I'll get help, don't worry." He did not seem to respond, for he did not let go and instead continued staring at her with those un-Remus-ish eyes. 

Ten minutes now.

He could see through the pain that seemed to be coming over him that she wanted to leave him. She seemed to be trying to reason with him, but he couldn't let her, for suddenly things became clear, for that one moment a flash of understanding had come before his eyes before being replaced with Aurelia's worried face.

"Aurelia!" he said finally with five minutes left. "Don't…leave…"

Aurelia stopped in her pleas for him to let go of her so she could get assistance. His voice was raspy and throaty, as though it was causing him great effort to speak at all.

"I'm just going to get help, Remus, don't worry –,"

"No!" he said suddenly. His voice wasn't his either. "You've got to understand…"

"What?"

He spoke slowly, trying to tell her everything in the two minutes they now had left. "The man…from the magazine…find him…"

"The magazine, what--," she started, but he shushed her.

"Just…listen…find him…ask him…"

"Ask what?"

"About the article."

"The article? From the magazine?" she paused. It was one minute to moonrise now, she could feel it. What was she to do as a wolf to help Remus? She couldn't speak, she couldn't write, she had to do something, but Remus still would not let her go, he was keeping her on the bed with all his strength. 

"Aurelia…going to go…get help."

"Going? You're not going anywhere!" she exclaimed, trying to talk some sense into him before it was too late.

He would've said something else to warn her or maybe to soothe her nerves, because she was looking very frazzled by his spastic reaction to the full moon. But he could not help it.

As the moon rose, Aurelia could feel her fur starting to sprout and felt the familiar pain that went through her abdomen. At the same moment, there was a dull pop and when she opened her eyes Remus was gone.

   * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * 


	6. Corn Flakes and Oatmeal

Disclaimer: I don't own the HP characters, themes, and places that are liable to make an appearance below, though a great number of them are OCs. Again, very useless to sue me, I'm no richer than the last time I wrote one of these things.

A/N: Thanks to the reviewers. Enjoy the story.

_                                                         Chapter 6_

_                                           Corn Flakes and Oatmeal_

The moon was blocked by thick clouds that snowed heavily as night fell. Bridget thought that maybe their guest would not be a wolf as long as the moon was not visible in the sky. Bridget obviously knew very little about werewolves. The Speaker had told her that he would most likely be very weak when he arrived here but that she should still exercise caution when near him. 

The cave in which Bridget lived was very large that there were numerous other little rooms and holes branching out in it, like a very intricate spider's web. Bridget had fixed a heavy wooden door on one of the more sizable cavities. She levitated the unconscious wolf in there and locked the heavy lock. She did not worry too much about him escaping, for the cave was very deep in the mountain, and even if he did come back to consciousness and manage to break out of his room she very much doubted if he could find a way out. It had taken a fair few weeks before she herself had managed to navigate through the maze of hallways.

At any rate, it mattered very little, because he was out cold when she put him in there. She locked the heavy oak door. Standing on her toes she could see through the bars in the door, and him lying there on the cot. She wasn't easily frightened, but she had never seen a wolf that big before.

The Speaker had told her that the Lupin fellow might not be in the best shape when he arrived, as transporting someone that far by magic often was very hard on the subject. That was a bit of an understatement, she thought, for once you got past the sheer size of the beast, it really looked very scrawny and all-in-all unhealthy. It then occurred to her that might have been how he was before he had arrived.

Shrugging, she walked down the hall to another cavity a little ways down from the wolf's room where the Speaker sat by a huge roaring fire. His eyes were closed and he was muttering. Bridget supposed he would be happy when he saw that his attempt had been successful.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Lupin did not understand it, but when he transformed the following morning he screamed. He had not screamed during a transformation since he was a child. But as he felt his flesh and bones rearrange themselves, when he saw the strange stone room he was in, when he felt how his wolf-limbs ached more than normal from the previous night, he could not help but cry out in pain. For a split-second he chided himself for making a noise like that, but the pain he had felt last night coupled with his wolf-body mutating was enough to make him forget everything and scream in agony.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

The Speaker stopped staring at the dying embers long enough to call to Bridget. Before he could say anything she spoke.

"He's awake. I heard. I'm not deaf you know."

Muttering under his breath about impudent girls, he sent her off with a wave of his hand.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

He must have passed out again after he screamed, he wasn't sure. He woke to find a girl wiping his forehead with a wet cloth absentmindedly, staring longingly into space at nothing in particular. He felt as if little bricks were attached to his eyelids and his head pounded with a headache. Despite himself, he groaned.

"You passed out," the strange girl informed him when she saw signs of movement. She wet the cloth in the bucket beside the cot and continued wiping off his face, which, he realized, was drenched in sweat. "Do you always pass out the morning after a full moon?"

Something appeared to be wrong with the gears in his brain, for he answered the girl as if she had just inquired about the weather. "No."

"I thought not. The Speaker said you might when you transform because of the…" she looked up to the ceiling as if searching for the word to use, finally finding it. "…stress you underwent last night."

His eyes widened. Something had just clicked in his mind, which had just started to take in his surroundings. "What am I doing here?"

The girl raised a delicate eyebrow. "I thought you might have figured _that_ out. Dalen said you saw him in the park with Madam Umbridge one morning. But oh well." She stood. "The Speaker said that I'm supposed to make sure you're not injured. Are you?"

"I can't move my legs."

"Side effect of the Apparation. When people fight it they can hurt themselves very badly, splinching or something worse. But you weren't able to fight it, you were too weak from the full moon. So here you are, in fairly decent health, but I'm afraid you may not regain use of your legs for a number of hours. Things could be worse, though, I suppose."

Lupin sincerely doubted that. "You still haven't answered my question."

"I suggest you start with a few others."

"Pardon?"

"I mean try another question first. That way the answer to your first query might make more sense."

Feeling more frustrated by the minute, he stared at her. She stared back. She was probably in her mid twenties and had the unhealthy clammy appearance of someone who didn't see sunlight very often. Not sure what else to do, he said, taking a deep breath, "All right, another question. Where am I?"

"Excellent question. Can't answer that, unfortunately."

Lupin raised his eyebrows.

"Well, I suppose I could, but just a small bit. You're currently on the very top of a tall mountain called the Hill."

"That's it?"

"Well, why not go all the way? You're still in Britain. Up north. By the Scottish border."

"Awfully vague, aren't you? Suppose being a prisoner and all I'm not supposed to know, eh?"

"Now you're catching on, there's a good lad. Now, ask again."

Feeling more bemused by the minute and also increasingly drowsy for some reason, he asked where on this "hill" he was.

"A cave. It originally was very small, but the wizards who used to live in it expanded it to it's size today. Bit like a labyrinth, really."

"A cave, hmm?" He looked around. That explanation seemed to coincide with the rough stone in the walls. 

"One more question."

He took his eyes away from the cave's walls to stare at her. "And just who are you?"

"I'm Bridget. I used to live in the village down by the bottom of the Hill. Then one day I was kidnapped."

"Kidnapped? Does that happen a lot around here?"

"Well, I suppose you could say that, but I'm a bit different from you as a hostage here on the Hill."

"How's that?"

"I'm not dead," she said simply.

With that extraordinary pronouncement, she left his cell, taking the bucket with the cloth with her. He was so surprised he did not even stop to ponder the advantage of the door she had left open, though it wouldn't matter as his legs still felt like lead. He still hadn't moved when she came back with a tray of food.

"What are you talking about?" he demanded once she entered. "I'm not dead." _Yet._

She smirked in a rather annoying fashion, setting the food down by his bed. "No, I suppose not. It's just that I was thinking that fairly soon you might wish it were true."

Still, Lupin stared at her, his eyes now wide, he felt now completely awake. He had, with great effort, pushed himself into a sitting position, dragging his limp legs along with him. There was a pause. He stared at her and she very slowly lowered herself to the floor, making a great fuss in straightening her skirt and then pouring a bit of cereal into a bowl.

"Are you hungry? I am. Do you mind corn flakes?" she asked, pouring another bowl and then adding milk to both of them.

"You're bluffing," he said, still staring. "Trying to scare me." She offered him one of the bowls, but he didn't take it.

She looked thoughtful. "I suppose I am." When he didn't take the cereal she set it back on the tray and started in on her own. "It worked very well, didn't it?"

He just stared still. The girl was eating cereal quite nonchalantly, expecting him to eat with her, as though they were old friends having dinner. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes, trying to clear his head. When he opened them, she was still eating. "What do you want with me?" he asked very quietly.

She looked up from her breakfast, apparently alarmed. "Me? What makes you think _I_ have anything to do with this? It's the Speaker that does it all, he's the one you want to stare down." She paused, watching him in his unwavering examination of her. "Like that."

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Alan Callard's senses were offended in numerous ways very early in the morning. He came downstairs having just transformed (which, of course, was never much of a picnic). In his advanced state of early-morning-ness he managed to pour hot coffee all over his arm. He took out his wand to clean it up, muttering a lot of what Aurelia would call "blue language." He sat at the table, still nursing his burnt arm.

He didn't like waking up alone, he had a thing where he just had to talk to someone in the morning. Hell, he had a thing where he needed to talk to someone at every hour of the day. He usually just got lucky for one night with most girls, they typically didn't stick around long after he told them. Some acted like it didn't matter to them, yet they rarely came back after a full moon. Nothing new to him, he just enjoyed the company.

When Aurelia Apparated with a _pop_ into his kitchen he jumped and spilled his coffee again.

"Good lord, twice in a space of twenty minutes, that must be a new record," he said, but Aurelia didn't give that much thought.

Her younger brother (by five years exactly) was built a bit like a barrel in the chest with very short legs. His face was very much like hers, but while hers had a harsh, jutting look about it his was softer and a little better-humored. His dark red hair was distinctly tousled at the moment and he had an old pair of Wimbourne Wasps pajama bottoms on. Aurelia supposed she herself didn't look too groomed because she hadn't paid much attention as she dressed that morning. 

"Never figured you for a morning person, Aurelia. What are you doing here?" he asked while cleaning up his mess again. His smirk faded off his face when she told him what had happened the previous night.

"Come on, we're going to the Ministry. We'll report it to them."

Aurelia shook her head. "Alan, I don't know if that's a good idea--,"

"Aurelia, you _saw_ what happened, how can they explain that away?"

Very well, it turned out. The witch behind the desk told them that Remus Lupin had applied for a travel pass from the Werewolf Registry desk and was, according to their records, currently in Armenia. Brother and sister both stared, Aurelia finally saying, "Do you have any idea how many things are utterly _wrong _with that sentence.?"

The witch stared at them. "Well, according to this, he left yesterday. Your friend didn't tell you he was leaving, maybe?"

Aurelia shook her head. "No, you don't understand, he _wasn't_ planning on leaving. I told you, it was kidnap."

The witch looked surprised, but, Alan noted hopefully, not doubtful. "That is odd, because according to this he had applied for the pass months ago. That way the Armenian Ministry of Magic would be ready for him when he came."

Aurelia looked at her shrewdly. "Let me say this again, for it doesn't seem to be getting through to you: _our friend was forcibly taken from his bedroom while I was with him._ Do you understand that?"

The witch was obviously taken aback at Aurelia's very hostile tone. Sensing this wouldn't get them anywhere, Alan shot his sister a look and pulled her back. "What she means to say is if you could perhaps give us some help, because we're quite certain that our friend isn't in Estonia or wherever."

The witch looked back at him, relieved at the friendly face. "Of, of course, I'll go speak to my superior, he can issue an alert and maybe we can find out what happened," and she stood up and went into a office that was behind a closed door in the back.

"We shouldn't have come here," Aurelia told him under her breath.

"Why not?"

"Now they'll know we're onto them."

"_Onto_ them? Aurelia, you make it sound like we're being watched."

She eyed him warily, but before she could answer the deskwitch came back, looking vaguely troubled. "My boss isn't here at the moment, but when he is I'll owl you and you can come and talk to him, I…" she trailed off, and Alan thought for a second she looked like she was truly sorry she couldn't be of more help. Aurelia, however, said hurriedly that that would be fine. 

"My name's Belinda Strauss, by the way, and I'll owl you once I get word from my boss, he's out somewhere, but his secretary doesn't seem to know where, the whole thing's rather dodgy, and--,"

"Yes, well thank you," said Aurelia, dragging Alan off in an opposite direction. "Come to my house. I've got my own owls to deliver, if you don't mind."

"Aurelia, what are you--,"

But she had already Disapparated. 

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

"So are you hungry? Because I can't stay in here all day, I'm afraid."

Strangely enough, he was, quite so in fact, so he finally accepted. Bridget seemed quite content to eat her breakfast in silence, but that didn't sit well with Lupin. She stonewalled any question, however, that had to do with what he was doing here and who this Speaker was. He finally seized the only topic of conversation he didn't think she could possibly find an objection to.

"I always liked this stuff when I was a kid."

Bridget looked at him. "What stuff?"

"The corn flakes." _I'm talking about breakfast cereal with a woman who's keeping me locked up in a cave for…some reason, _he thought bemusedly_._ Bridget must have found it odd too, for she raised her eyebrows. He continued, nevertheless. "I used to demand it from my mother every morning, it was very funny, actually. Wouldn't eat anything else. Did you ever have them?"

"As a child?"

"Yes."

She shook her head slowly, still fazed from the odd subject matter. "No, we usually had oatmeal at the orphanage."

"An orphanage? You lived in an orphanage."

She nodded "I didn't like it much there. It was very cold."

"The orphanage?"

"No, the oatmeal."

"Oh."

They ate the rest of the meal in silence, until she finished.

"I'll be back later," she told him, set taking his half-finished bowl from him (his hands felt very stiff and clumsy for some reason). "Good-bye Mr. Lupin."

And with that, she left, this time closing the door after her.

**NEXT CHAPTER: **We meet the venerable Bayford Billings and Lupin ponders an escape.

**YOU'VE READ, NOW PLEASE REVIEW!!**


	7. Discussions of Souls

Disclaimer: I don't own the HP characters, themes, and places that are liable to make an appearance below, though a great number of them are OCs. It's still very useless to sue me; I'm no richer than the last time I wrote one of these things.

A/N: I'd like to dedicate this chapter to my Social Studies teacher, Dr. Scott for two reasons. One, I left my notebook with this story in it in his room and he ran down to the buses to give it back to me when he could've just made me wait until tomorrow to get it and also because he sort of reminds me of Lupin, he's nice and a good teacher and all that. (Briana is praising a teacher?! What is the world coming to!)

Also, as always, thanks to the reviewers, particularly Rinnington, lucidity, and Feerique-Freak. It's such a good feeling to get nice reviews from people. Now, on with the story.

_ Chapter 7_

_ Discussions of Souls_

Aurelia was diving through her desk, which looked like a paper factory had exploded somewhere in the vicinity.

"What is all this, anyway?" asked Alan, who had just arrived in her and Lupin's flat. 

"Where the hell is my goddamn quill?" shouted Aurelia from under her mess of a desk. "I just saw—_OUCH!_" she had tried to stand up but her head had come in contact with the underside of the desk, causing her to swear louder than she had before.

"Aurelia?"

"_WHAT?!"_

She looked like she very much wanted to kick something hard, and he figured if he didn't act now it could be him. "Your quill's right here," he said, fishing it out from under a pile of parchment on the desk.

She snatched it from him and mumbled, "Thanks." Then she dove for a piece of parchment and started scribbling feverishly on it.

"Aurelia?"

"Hmm?"

"Just who're you writing to?"

"Remember those papers you snitched awhile back?" she asked, still writing.

Alan leaned casually over the desk. "I snitch a lot of things, Aurelia. You're going to have to be more specific."

She stopped writing long enough to roll her eyes then continued. "From Umbridge, dung-for-brains. The magazine."

"Ah, yes, I remember nicking that. My finest hour, if I do say so myself."

"No jokes now, Alan. The man in that article is who Remus told me to find."

Alan looked thoughtful and unnaturally serious. "Do you think Remus knew something about him?"

"I doubt it. He would've told me if he had. He probably just figured the man could help us figure out what's happening."

"He always was a smart one, wasn't he?"

"_Is_ a smart one, Alan. Remus _is_ a smart one," she said, finishing the letter, folding it up, and sealing it with her wand. 

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * 

Lupin closed his eyes, for he did not want to look at the depressing cave walls for another moment. Escape, of course, was on his mind.

Apparating was the obvious choice. He tried, but it was like running into a brick wall. Probably an Anti-Disapparation Jinx. Not surprising. 

He didn't have his wand, so dueling with Bridget was out. He supposed when she came back in here he could just slug her but with his lame legs that didn't seem a good prospect. He couldn't crawl out of the cave on his arms. 

His legs scared him the most of all. Bridget had said they should get better, but it still frightened him. He sank back into his rough pillow on his equally rough cot. Now sleep was all he could think of. Curiously enough, he could feel no real fear of what lie ahead at that point. It was hard when he wasn't even sure where he was or what he was doing here. He supposed it was likely to change later but now, he sank into sleep.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * 

Alan spent an awkward day pent up in the flat with Aurelia, who was pacing nervously, seemingly waiting for her owl to return. He tried to read a book that Remus had lent him a few days before, but that just made him think of what had happened, so he ended up staring off into space, thinking very hard. Finally, at evening time, he spoke.

"Aurelia?"

She turned from her place at the window, where she had been watching the gray clouds for some sign of the post. "Yes?"

"Do you remember that day in the woods? When we got lost?"

She seemed surprised he was talking about this, but not as surprised as he was that he had brought it up. "Of course I do. How could I forget that?"

He shook his head. "It's just that…I was four at the time."

"I know that, Alan."

"Yes, well, I _was_ only four, so the whole thing sort of blurs together in my mind, so I was wondering…"

Aurelia watched him warily. "Alan, haven't I already told you about that night? You didn't think your incessant badgering me about the topic whenever Mum wasn't around wasn't enough to get the full story? What's wrong?"

He also examined her. She was in what he liked to call her "full-battle stance," her feet were planted firmly on the floor and her fists were balled with rage he knew was not meant for him. "I was just thinking. Me and Remus, we've had the lycanthropy for as long as we could remember, pretty much, but you…" he trailed off, still trying to sort out what he wanted to tell her, "you remember what it was like not to have it."

A very stuffy silence filled the air of the flat, and Aurelia seemed, for once in her life, to be at a loss for what to say. "I, I do. Why?"

"I was just wondering if you did, that's all. I was thinking about that night in the forest and it occurred to me that the whole bite must have been even worse for you because, well…"

"What?"

"You knew something better. I mean to say, you knew what it was like and you could remember what it was like to be, well, _normal_."

Aurelia sat down next to him on the couch, staring in front of her as though lost in thought. When she spoke, she sounded absentminded. "Really, Alan, being normal, could you stand it?"

"What?"

"I couldn't. I enjoy being…what's the word? Un-normal?"

He smirked, casting a sideways glance at his sister, whom he saw was smiling faintly as well. "Un-normal? First sign of insanity, isn't it? Making up words?"

"Oh, there's got to be another sign before _that,_" she muttered.

"Whatever it is, I'm sure you've exhibited it. Remind me to ask Remus when I see him again."

She looked at him solidly now, not smiling anymore, but for once not looking angry. "I will. We'll ask him together."

"Right."

At that moment, an owl flew into the room and dropped a letter on the table in front of them. Alan made a grab for it, but Aurelia was quicker. She read it quickly, and then said, "Right, we're leaving in an hour."

"Leaving?" he asked, finally getting the parchment from her. It was written in a rather shaky hand that said simply _Come at 7 o'clock tonight. We can talk _and had an address. 

"Aurelia, are you even sure that we can trust this, what's his name again? Oh, here it is, Billings. How do we know he isn't…"

She waved off his worries with her hand. "Don't worry, I've told him we're simply interested in what he does and that we're reporters."

His eyes widened. "Reporters? For the newspaper?"

"Something like that," said Aurelia vaguely, picking up Remus' book that Alan had set down and flipping through it. "Don't worry it'll be fine. You're likely to mess up somehow, so let me do the talking, will you?"

"Thanks so much for your vote of confidence," he mumbled.

"Anytime, anytime."

That's how it happened that Alan found himself in a stuffy sitting room, sipping on tea that tasted like it had been sitting on the shelf a fair few years and watching the quivering jowls of an old wizard who eyed them rather beadily. Alan supposed their disguise as two word-weary reporters had to be wearing thin, but Aurelia stuck to it.

"What we really wanted to ask you about," she said after listening to a ten minute tirade on the benefits Shrinking Spells versus that of a potion, "is a particular article you were quoted in several months ago. It was in _Magizoology Monthly_, I think I have it right…yes, here it is." She reached into her bag and pulled out the magazine. Alan wondered briefly how she had gotten it, as he hadn't given it to her, then remembered he wasn't the only one in the family with quick fingers; she had probably nicked it from his flat sometime when she was there and he wasn't. She flipped open to the page in question. The old man's white, tufty eyebrows had made a near perfect V-shape as he looked at the article, then shook his head. "Dodgy stuff, that," he pronounced finally.

"What do you mean?" prompted Aurelia. "Did you ever make any progress on it? What research did you do?"

Mr. Billings shook his head again. "No, I couldn't. It was just a theory presented to me by a colleague that I was testing out."

Alan had decided previous to this that being a magical theorist or whatever Mr. Billings called himself had to be one of the most excruciating jobs on the planet; it was just a lot of complex spell jargon and lots and _lots_ of nothing even remotely interesting. He'd been fighting the urge to yawn throughout the entire interview. Not until Mr. Billings had mentioned the werewolf article had he really started paying attention.

"What exactly was it? The theory? The article itself is rather vague, you can see."

"Yes…well, as I said, it is a rather dodgy topic. One that often can, um, _question_ the morals of the theorists who bring it up."

Alan was bursting to ask if it had done so to his, but a look from Aurelia silenced him. She nodded at the old wizard to continue.

"The theory involves…well, to understand it, I suppose you need some background. You've heard of a dementor's Kiss?"

Alan felt his stomach plummet and heard Aurelia say slowly, "Yes…"

"After the Kiss is preformed on a subject, where do you think the extracted soul goes?"

That thought was so unpleasant that Alan scarcely wanted to even contemplate it. Aurelia told Mr. Billings she couldn't imagine what became of it. 

"Presumably, it is digested somehow by the dementor, for that's what a dementor feeds on, of course, happiness, and even in the most glum person on the planet there are _some_ happy memories in his or hers own soul. Our knowledge of dementors, however, is sparse at best. I mean," he grinned, "would _you_ want to be the one to study them?"

Aurelia smiled back feebly. "N-no. Wouldn't at all."

"Well, we really don't know what becomes of a soul after the dementor's done with it, but what is up for debate is whether, if the soul was taken, it could be of use."

Aurelia raised her eyebrow, though she still felt faintly sick. "I'm afraid I don't know what you mean."

"Allow me too explain. If you took the soul, it has, well, _essence,_ wouldn't you say?"

"Essence?"

"What people are made of, what they _are, _if you wish to put it that way. That's what your soul is, after all. If you could bottle that, what it is that people are, what gives them strength, well…" he trailed off thoughtfully. "The premise intrigued me, no less, even it does sound somewhat fanciful."

"Where do the werewolves come into it?" That had been Alan, and it surprised him, but he suddenly been taken over by an Aurelia-like furor. 

Mr. Billings looked a little surprised as well. He said delicately, "Well, werewolves, themselves, are interesting creatures, as half the time they are as normal as any man yet also there's a small part of them that's…different. More fierce than a normal being in some ways. Darker, if you wish. Just a small part of them, of course. Do you know what I mean?"

Neither of them really did, but they nodded to play along.

"Well, that power, that _essence, _is what we were after. But it didn't work out, and it's probably best that it didn't. As I said, it's incredibly dodgy stuff."

Needless to say, after that, they both felt more confused than they had before, if that was possible. 

"Funny you should be so interested in that particular article, I had another chap coming by to ask me about it as well," he said thoughtfully.

Alan had been on the verge of announcing their departure, but now he stopped. "Who?"

"No one in particular, just a younger colleague. He was _very_ interested, actually. Bit too much, maybe. He asked for all the research I had done on the topic, and, as I had been finished with it, I gave it to him. He might have furthered on it, I don't know, bit of an odd chap, that one."

"When was this?"

"Quite a while back now, I know that article is pretty old. Merlin, I am getting old, I can barely even remember now. A year? Six months?"

"Maybe we could get his name? The man who asked about it before? We could include any information he could give us in our, um, _article,_" said Alan. Aurelia, he saw, looked extremely upset, so he figured he should do the talking.

Mr. Billings looked questioning, but said, "Yes, of course." And he copied a name down for them. "I hope I've been of help to you."

"Oh, you have," Alan assured him, and with that, he and his sister Apparated home.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Belinda Strauss stood nervously behind the door of her boss' office, tapping her foot on the wooden floor. 

She was a curvy black girl who had the quality of stuttering when she got jittery, which made the prospect of talking to her boss a very daunting one. Still, she had to try, for this had been bothering her all day.

_I mean_, she thought earnestly, _even if he is a werewolf, we should still do _something_ about him. _She didn't know much about werewolves except what she had picked up from ghost stories at school and home, and she expected most of that had been embellished to make for something good to tell around the fire or wherever. Werewolves couldn't be pure evil, could they? 

The door opened and her titchy little boss, Hermes Finkle, stood in the threshold.

"Miss Strauss," he said in a serious voice and stepped back to let her in.

There were two strangers in the office, one a shifty eyed young man who fidgeted nervously in his seat and the other a squat smiling witch with a horrible hand-knit red vest on. Belinda knew her by sight; Madam Umbridge, Fudge's assistant. Both of the strangers were situated behind the desk with Mr. Finkle, while a chair in front of it was obviously intended for her. This made her tremble, for the scene looked suspiciously like an interrogation. Too much in fact. She shivered.

Madam Umbridge grinned a horrible grin at her. "No need to be nervous, dear. Hermes?"

Mr. Finkle, her boss, had never struck her as a man particularly used to dishing out authority, so he trembled nearly as much as Belinda had. Dolores Umbridge in his office! Belinda wondered what someone with as much influence with Fudge was doing in her dingy little corner of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Everyone knew Madam Umbridge had the Minister wrapped around her little finger. What she was doing here….

Mr. Finkle asked Belinda to sit, which she did, her nerves still not assuaged. Finkle cleared his throat. "Well, Melinda," he started, casting a sideways look at Umbridge, "we wanted to ask you about this visit you got up at the desk from two rather, um, _intriguing _strangers. First, allow me to introduce Madam Umbridge. She was worried when I told her of your two visitors, so she asked to sit in when I met with you. And this is Mr. Butler, her assistant." Belinda nodded to each of them in turn, not bothering to correct Mr. Finkle when he forgot her name.

From this point on, Madam Umbridge seemed to take charge of the affair. Smiling in what she must have thought was a kindly manner she stared at Belinda, as though sizing her up. Belinda was reminded strongly of the day her brother had played a joke on her by placing a slimy toad in front of her face while she woke up (actually, the toad wasn't slimy, toads aren't by nature, but it might as well have been, the way she'd screamed). Belinda trembled even harder under the toad-like gaze. "Well, dear, I suppose it begins several months ago, when a law was passed called the Werewolf Protection Act. Had you heard of it?"

Belinda shook her head.

"Basically, it was just a piece of legislation designed to bring stability and order to a small section to our society that could be considered very dangerous. _Extremely _dangerous. Do you understand, dear?"

She nodded mutely, wishing Madam Umbridge would stop calling her "dear."

"I and several others worked tirelessly with the Ministry for months and finally the bill was passed, and no one was more happy than I, I assure you. Many of us felt safer in bed at night because of this bill."

"B-but," interrupted Belinda, "I thought that werewolves aren't—that they aren't, I mean," she stopped, for she was stuttering. Trying to clear her thoughts, she started again slowly. "I thought that they weren't um, I mean, don't they take some sort of potion that, you know…_changes _them?" she finished somewhat lamely. She had heard of such a thing, but only in passing. She was surprised she had even brought it up at all, but Madam Umbridge seemed to be going in another direction with this. They didn't seem all that concerned by with this Lupin man. Not at all.

Umbridge seemed taken aback and stared at Belinda now even harder, as though she had to form an entirely new impression of her character. "Yes, well, that's true, they do have ways to treat their _condition_, but many of us are still worried that problems may still exist. They may choose to be lax with their treatment, for sometimes it can happen, particularly with _creatures_ such as that, do you understand what I mean, dear?"

"I—I suppose….""

"Wonderful," she said in a sweet, falsely cheery voice. "So you'll have no problem describing for me the two who visited your desk this morning, will you?"

Belinda stared at the three people in front of her. Mr. Finkle still looked as nervous as she felt, the Mr. Butler character looked quite honestly bored with the whole proceeding, and Madam Umbridge simply stared. "I--,"

"Their names, perhaps?"

"I didn't get those," said Belinda quietly, just realizing it now as she stared into her hands. How had she expected to owl them if she didn't know their names? Stupid of her, really.

"What did they look like?" asked Madam Umbridge with a tick of impatience in her voice.

"T-they both had red hair."

Umbridge looked satisfied. A wide smile came over her face. "Brother and sister, maybe?"

"Yes, most likely. The woman was very upset, because…." She stared into her lap; she was afraid if she looked in front she might lose her nerve. "Apparently her friend had disappeared and she was coming to report it. Remus Lupin was his name. I remember that, for the Werewolf Registry had a file on him and I picked that up. It's all in that note I left you there, Mr. Finkle."

Umbridge's cold smile still didn't leave her face. "Yes, I expected that. Mr. Lupin has applied for a travel pass to be abroad. He had to do so very specifically, for as a werewolf he is not allowed to travel without Ministry notification."

"That's a raw deal," said Belinda abruptly, surprising herself. "What if he wants to go on a holiday or something? He has to ask you permission? What is he, on probation? Has he committed a crime?" She wondered vaguely why she was arguing on the behalf of a man she had never met.

Umbridge now looked offended. "Not necessarily. Those procedures, like the one involving the werewolf travel pass, are set up in _my _bill for _your_ safety, Miss Strauss, from dangerous beasts who--." She stopped, closed her eyes and took a deep breath as to collect herself. 

Belinda turned to her boss now, demanding reason. "The woman who stopped by today, she said there's no way Lupin could be in Lithuania."

"Armenia."

"Whatever. They seemed quite adamant he wasn't there, though."

Mr. Finkle looked even more nervous. "I'm sure Madam Umbridge knows what she's doing, dealing with the werewolves who came in this morning. Perhaps you could be a little more cooperative."

Belinda started. It hadn't occurred to her that the two she had met that morning were werewolves. It intrigued her, for she had never met one before. They didn't seem hideous beasts to her. That woman had been a little fiery, but she seemed extremely upset as well. Genuinely upset, too upset to be lying. This Lupin fellow was probably her husband or brother or something and now no one would help her just because she was a werewolf. What was going on here she could only guess. "You don't think it's worth finding out, maybe just looking _into_, what these two people said. Even if they are werewolves."

All throughout Belinda's small outburst, Hermes Finkle had been cringing in his seat. He could only imagine what this girl small bit of recklessness was going to cost him. Finally, he stood. "Well, Melinda, your information had been thoroughly enlightening, I'm sure you'd like to get home, it's getting late."

Belinda, after her small flare-up of disbelief had fled, had gone back in her introverted shell. She nodded, and with another look at Umbridge, she left the office.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Bridget had nothing to do that night at dinner, for both of the male occupants of the cave were asleep and she thought it best to let them be. She didn't know what kind of moon the werewolf would be in when he woke up. She did know what kind of mood the Speaker would be in, so she let him be, so she let him be. They were both still tired from the events of the previous night, she knew. She wandered aimlessly through the stone corridors of the cave, wishing that Dalen was here or that the Lupin man would wake up so she would have someone to talk to. Not that she and Dalen ever had had really thought-provoking conversations, she knew he found her immeasurably odd. She also knew that the only conversation she could have with Mr. Lupin would be another hopelessly awkward one. Why she desired another one was unknown to her. 

Eventually she came to the entrance of the cave, which by this late in the evening was soaked in moonlight. The clouds had gone, leaving blankets of heavy snow in their wake. And the quiet. God, that deathly quiet was all around, the wind did not even blow, and she was too high up on the mountain and too far away from the village to hear any remote sounds of life. She hated the quiet, for when it got quiet she thought very hard. She got very analytical.

Despite the open entrance, it never got cold in the cave because of the Insulating Charm Tom had placed on it years ago before he had left. He had done so because he knew how much she hated the cold yet loved the snow. "Now," he had told her, "you can be warm and stare out at the snow all you want, if you'd like." And she did, often, but it was not the same. She had not left the cave in a number of years, so she had not touched the snow in many, many years. It was not the same, she thought. She could not leave the mountain and touch the snow.

It was funny how much the small things could matter. Things like the moon, which was now just a little less than full. A little thing like that tiny sliver of moon meant the world to Mr. Lupin, didn't it? A tiny feeling like cold snow beneath her fingers just one more time meant so much to her. Funny how that was.

It was far too quiet around here, she decided. Her mind thought these odd things when it was too quiet.

When everyone woke up around here, she resolved to find a way to make some more noise.

_When Mr. Lupin wakes up, perhaps_, she thought, and left to make something to eat.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

A young woman sat in a corner in a desk in the Magical Law Library in the Ministry, engrossed in a very heavy leather bound book. Embossed on the cover were the words _Wizengamot Rulings, Vol. CXCXXXI._ The lamp on her desk was the sole source of light in the dark library. When done, she stood up and took out her wand to put the book away back on the shelf, stretching her arms out wide as she did so. 

It was late, well past ten o'clock and most people would have gone home by now. The amount of solitude she was sure to have relieved her, as she knew that she didn't want others to see what she planned to do, particularly Madam Umbridge. Her jaw set, as though she had finally found the nerve to act, she headed upstairs.

According to the bill she had just read, upstairs there should be a register she could read that would tell her the names and residences of all werewolves in Britain. She had a desire to talk to the two who had visited her this morning. They could explain to her what had happened to their friend and maybe help her make some sense of what had happened today in Mr. Finkle's office.

Her friend Peter was the only one working in the office of the Department of Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures and gave her the werewolf register when she requested it. Then he returned to the work at his desk, which appeared to be overflowing with parchment.

"Are you sure you're allowed to give this to me?" she asked uncertainly, holding the thick file folder he had handed and skimming it. "This has their names and all their information and everything."

Peter was far too overworked to care much about possible miscarriages of justice going on in his office. He shrugged. "They just tell me to give it to anyone who requests it."

"Hmm." She frowned, but took the folder to a safe corner where she was sure she would not be bothered.

There were twelve little tabs with names on them arranged alphabetically. Unsure of where to start, she took out the papers under "Lupin, Remus J."

A picture was attached of a worn-looking man whose hair was turning prematurely gray. He did not look, she noticed, excessively vicious, just tired and thin. Not a frightening werewolf at all. 

The man lived in a flat in London with one Aurelia Callard, who was stated on the form as "significant other." A girlfriend, just what Belinda had been looking for. Sure enough, "Callard, Aurelia R." was listed along with "Callard, Alan D." on the registry. She copied down both of their addresses on a scrap of paper she'd ripped off Lupin's papers, because, she reflected grimly, if he was in Armenia he'd have no need of them. 

Anyone walking by her corner right then would've thought that she was up to no good, that she was poring over illicit imformation she'd nicked from top-secret Ministry file. In reality, what she was doing was perfectly legal, she knew. Why she felt so jumpy, as if someone was following her, she couldn't explain.

She stood finally, tucking the scrap of paper into her robes, and taking a final look at the file stamped WEREWOLF REGISTRY across its front in black, heavy letters. There were only twelve or so names in it, something Belinda had to laugh at. Umbridge's whole "Werewolf Protection Act" had been formed as a vendetta against less than a dozen people. Sort of funny when you thought about it. Umbridge was a real minimalist, wasn't she? Or a bitch, it depends on your point of view.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

It was close to freezing that night, something Dalen Butler could tell you very well, as he was sitting in a cold car in the middle of it. Damn Umbridge had told him to rent a car and stake out Lupin's flat. Nothing flashy or suspicious that would attract unwanted attention, just something to hide out in. She had been adamant, however, that he not turn it on, lest the werewolves notice. _I'm going to spend the entire morning tomorrow thawing myself out and does she give a damn?,_ he thought, grimacing. He had been nuts to do any of this in the first place, he thought. It was stupid and was not getting anywhere. That damn old man would stall as long as he could, for what? The Speaker didn't need any of the money that was going to come from the venture, that was painfully clear. What did an immortal old man need with thousands of Galleons? And that Bridget was even worse, with those creepy pale eyes that would stare you down if you gave them the time of day. It had been asinine to take up the entire convoluted plot in the first place, he knew that now. But it was too late to back out now. It was all or nothing from this point on. He realized that now and knew Umbridge had realized it too. They were in this until the end, whenever that may come.

Dalen reached for his wand, thinking of conjuring up a fire. Screw Umbridge, he was _freezing_, he needed _warmth_. Before he got there, however, something stirred in the alley between the buildings. It was too dark to see anything distinct, but it was someone, he could just make out, wearing wizards' robes. He leaned forward on the dash, narrowing his eyes. The person was walking quickly and was briefly illuminated by the street lamp. Dalen saw a black woman with delicate bones in her face and a nervous step. He recognized her with a trace of surprised. A trace, hell, he was _really_ surprised. Belinda Strauss was shrouded in darkness until she reached the buzzers to the flats. Quickly she pressed one and staged a hurried conversation with whoever answered. Even in the darkness and across the street, Dalen could almost feel the nervousness radiating off her. Finally, with a swish of the robes, she went up the stairs to the flat.

Dalen lay back in the seat, letting the his fire warm him, wondering what the woman wanted with two werewolves and the whole lot of trouble they were about to find themselves in. 

                         * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Belinda did not leave Lupin and Aurelia's flat until around midnight after she had had a long talk with it's two occupants. She told them all about the meeting in Mr. Finkle's office earlier that evening and Umbridge's insistence that Lupin was abroad.

"It's utter bilge, of course," Aurelia told her. "There's no way Remus would go to Latvia."

"Armenia," said Belinda and Alan together.

"Whatever! The point is it doesn't make sense because the day they say he left was a full moon. What werewolf in their right mind would travel on a full moon?"

Belinda nodded. "Well, that's what I figured. I checked the lunar chart."

Alan looked at her, impressed. "You sure did your homework, didn't you? How did you find us anyway? Aurelia wouldn't let me tell you our names."

Belinda only felt hurt for about a second, then explained about reading up in the library about Umbridge's werewolf bill and the subsequent search for the registry. Alan looked even more impressed. "And here I thought that damn thing could only cause trouble. That was...studious of you." He paused, thinking. "I don't mean to sound rude asking you this, Belinda, but..."

"Why are you here?" Aurelia finished for him, examining the other woman with biting mistrust. Belinda stared at her lap, something she did a lot of. 

"I--I don't know. I just thought it was unfair they weren't doing anything and weren't planning on doing anything. My mother used to say 'an injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere,' or something like that. I'm not sure who said it originally, some American Muggle, but at any rate, that sounded incredibly stupid, what I just said, didn't it? But it's true and, well…" she trailed of, hoping to find some common ground. "That Umbridge woman seemed an incorrigible bitch, I suppose is what it was. That bill is utter dung, I thought, once I read it. What's she got against werewolves, anyway?"

Aurelia shrugged, but said, "I think it's got something to do with why he was taken."

Belinda didn't have to ask whom she meant. "Do you know why he was taken? Have you found out?"

Aurelia shook her head just a little too quickly and cast a warning look at Alan. "Not an inkling."

Belinda had a fairly acute internal polygraph; she was quite good at picking out liars. Nevertheless, she did not question the Callards on their reasons for withholding what they knew. She supposed they had ample reason not to trust her, she did work for the Ministry. In time they would, she supposed. Not now. Graciously, she took her leave, promising them to return soon with any information she could find. 

Aurelia continued staring at the spot the young woman had Apparated from some time after she had left.

"What do you reckon?" Alan asked her finally. 

She shrugged. "She seems genuine enough, I suppose. She doesn't seem to have the nerve to be a spy, really. But she could help us."

Alan grinned. "Besides," he pointed out, "what have we got to lose?"

**NEXT CHAPTER: **Lupin and Bridget have a long talk while Alan and Aurelia become fugitives from the law.

**A/N: **You know what would be incredibly nice of you? Reviewing, that's what! I plan to have a sort of explanation next chapter, worry not all persons reading this. And eventually it will tie in, sort of, with what happened in "Chamber of Secrets." Have I intrigued you yet into reading more of a story I've been working _really _hard on? Speaking of reading, how 'bout reviewing?


	8. The Quiet

Disclaimer: I don't own HP. (Imagine that.)

A/N: This chapter took a long time to write, for which I apologize. I was having some technical difficulties (damn floppy disc), among other writing-related problems (damn contorted analogies), unfortunately. A lot of the content of this chapter came as a total surprise to me when I wrote it, so some stuff I said last chapter (the explanation, Lupin and Bridget's talk, Alan and Aurelia becoming fugitives) has been delegated to future chapters for the sake of space and my desire to update. At any rate, I think I'll stop doing those little "NEXT CHAPTER" thingys, just because sometimes things don't turn out how I plan. But oh well.

Thanks to my reviewers, all six of you. Just kidding, I love you guys, you're so great. And to aihjah: thanks for the recognition on that pun, I've been waiting on that from my other so-called "faithful" reviewers. I'm kidding again, I was actually quite impressed at myself when I came up with "D. Umb. Act," for I normally have no talent when it comes to puns. Anyway, enjoy the story.

_Chapter 8_

_The Quiet_

_The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread._

-Blaise Pascal

"Remus Lupin find himself in the depths of an admittedly peculiar and perplexing predicament, unsure of his footing, mostly because he can't use them."

Lupin's quill ceased scratching. He shook his head, and crossed out what he had just written. _Use them?_ Surely there he had meant his feet, but the whole thing was phrased oddly. And, as if that wasn't bad enough, there were too many "p" words in the first sentence. Thinking this may take him all night, he began again.

"Remus Lupin finds himself in the depths of a peculiar predicament, living in a mysterious mountain called, simply, the Hill, his only contact to the outside world being a young woman named Bridget, hereafter to be referred to as 'the Jailer.'" He stopped to grin slightly and then continued. "The Jailer refuses point-blank to respond even remotely to any of my--." He stopped again and crossed the last word out. Writing in third person was hard. "_His_ queries as to his presence there, and only making vague references to a certain member of the Wizengamot (hereafter referred to as 'the Spawn of Hell') and a mysterious, phantom-like creature called the Speaker (official title pending, though he personally thinks 'the Speaker' is an odd enough way to refer to somebody all ready).

"Getting back to the subject of the Jailer. She would be considered odd by anyone's standards, even by my his own, and his standards for odd people are quite steep, being what he is. For instance, despite her insistence of being a Muggle, she seems capable of doing magic."

Lupin paused again, not to think of what to write, but to ponder what he already had.

He had been there five days as of that evening, and since then absolutely nothing had happened. And nothing, while often used as hyperbole to express a subject's utter boredom, in this case was terribly applicable to his situation, for nothing had happened, save for his periodic visits from Bridget, who, he noticed, looked exponentially nervous every time he saw her. He had a theory about that had been worked out in his hours of extensive lethargy.

It had been the evening after he had feasted on the corn flakes with Bridget and the news about his legs was varied. They weren't numb anymore, but he still couldn't move them. And they hurt. A lot. Even someone as accustomed to pain as him had to grit his teeth and stare at the ceiling to keep his mind off the burning sensation.

It was because of this that he didn't see Bridget standing in the door of his cell until she spoke.

"Awake finally, are you?"

His head spun around. He had actually been up for several hours, but she wasn't to know that.

"What time is it?" he asked, as he had no watch, and the only thing lighting up the cell was a lone lantern that cast an eerie golden glow over everything.

"Late. Guess eating cereal can be stressful work."

"You have no idea," he told her, sitting up. "What are you doing here if it's so late?"

"I thought you might be hungry. How are the legs?" she asked, entering in much the same fashion she had before; with a tray of food, though this time it looked like supper.

"Terrible," he said, deciding not to mince words. "You said they'd get better."

She shrugged. "I lied. _What?_ You should keep away from small children with that stare, you know. It would freeze their insides."

That didn't stop him. "Bridget, you lied? Why would you--,"

"Oh, a few hours, a few days, it's all the same to me. Time sort of runs together in my head."

The strangeness of that statement would fail to hit Lupin until later, though it did make him reflect a little more on "the Jailer's" appearance. She had a worn look of a book you put away for a long time and then one day find by accident. She was young yet looked quite old, you could see it in her enormous eyes. Lupin knew the look quite well, as it was what he saw every time he looked in the mirror.

Before any further arguments could take place on the state of his legs, however, Bridget got up.

"You have dinner, I'll go see what I can do for you."

Lupin was halfway through the ham sandwich she had brought him when she returned, saying, "All right, I've got it."

"Got? What have you got?"

"You'll see." She knelt by the cot and carefully took the blanket off his legs and placed both of her white hands on his knees, staring at them intently while Remus simply watched her, too stunned to question. Even if he did, he doubted she would respond, for she looked totally locked into what she was doing, whatever it was she was doing.

Then he felt it. Pure energy was radiating from her fingertips. It traveled from his knees, it entered his bloodstream, navigating through all its little tributaries like an armada of determined little riverboats. It traveled up and up, and slowly he felt the pain in his legs leave like birds taking flight, darting upward into a bleached sky.

Finally, it stopped and she stood up, clapping her hands together. "There. That better?"

He considered. His accursed appendages could still not move on their own accord, but they didn't hurt. She had made sure of that.

The only people capable of doing wandless magic, as far as he had ever heard, were Healers who needed "unfiltered" magic, in a matter of speaking. They wanted it without the hindrance of a wand. But that was only spectacularly advanced older Healers, who could do it, a category Bridget surely didn't fall into.

"Bridget, are you a Healer?"

Her eyes widened. "You mean--oh, that's a wizard doctor, right?"

He stared at her. This was impossible, how did she--

"Well, no, I'm not one. I was training to be a nurse, though."

His jaw came very close to dropping open. "Bridget, a nurse? As in a Muggle _hospital _nurse?"

She nodded. "Yes. What's wrong?"

"Bridget, how could you do what you just did if you're a Muggle?"

The girl got a panicked look in her huge eyes. "Never mind. I just--,"

He surprised himself by grabbing her wrist, forcing her downward so her enormous eyes peered into his. "Bridget, tell me. Stop treating me like an old invalid in a home and give me some damn answers."

It was then that it happened, so quick it was like lightning, and if he hadn't been staring at her so intensely he would have missed it completely. Her eyes flickered, for just a second, to the doorway. The split second that she stared, so intensely, at that doorway, he could see straight through the nonchalant face she wore at all other times. On her face, taking root in those huge eyes of hers, was pure, unadulterated fear. She was terrified of whatever lurked outside of that cell, and suddenly, so was he. At what, he could not quite say. It served to reason that it was this man she kept referring to. The--

_Speaker._

A tiny little seed of an idea was dropped into his head. What if-and this was a pretty big if-this Speaker could possess people? He was an immensely powerful wizard, if that were true, and indeed he must be, if he could do the wandless magic. Moreover, force someone else to do the wandless magic. Force a Muggle, with seemingly nothing of the sort in her, to do an incredibly advanced practice usually only attempted by top-of-the-line Healers. Now that would be a truly powerful someone.

A pretty sick someone, at that. A someone who kidnaps young Muggle woman to do his bidding and, for some reason, (he gulped) werewolves.

That had been several days ago and he'd been brooding on the idea ever since. Brooding on things in general, really, experiencing what Bridget thought of as "that deathly quiet." But while her quiet was a bit like a rolling plain, with nothing in sight for miles around, his was like that eerie stillness before a storm. He could remember being in a situation like this when he had been travelling and had been unlucky enough to be caught in a tornado in the American state of Kansas. Before the funnel cloud had touched down the sky had been a creepy, vomit-colored yellow and the hairs on the back of his neck had stood straight like soldiers at attention, as if the body can almost sense that change in air pressure, that ominous calm that precedes the unthinkable.

Lupin shivered and turned back to his "memoirs."

That had been more a joke. He normally hated to get in that reminiscing-the-old-times sort of mood, it made him feel, well, old and goodness knows he didn't need anymore of that. But one memory in particular had surfaced to his mind, and it involved Sirius. Odd, because normally any memory involving Sirius Black was promptly ignored by him. Not this time, however.

He'd come up the stairs to his dorm. It was late and he was more tired than usual, having just spent the last few hours of his prefect duty being pummeled repeatedly with heavy spellbooks sent his way by Peeves. Opening the door, he observed his three friends. Peter had been on the bed, immersed in his Arithmancy homework, James had been playing with that dumb Snitch again, and Sirius was at the desk writing furiously.

James looked up at his arrival. "Ask Padfoot what he's doing, Moony, just ask him."

Knowing full well that Sirius would have long been finished with any homework they'd had, he did as James had said, walking over to Peter's bed to look over his figures.

"I," Sirius proclaimed, "am writing my memoirs."

He said "memoirs" with such feigned sincerity that they all snorted into their respective activities.

"Memoirs? Little young for that, aren't you? And you forgot to carry the one there, Peter," Remus had said.

While Peter furiously scribbled out a whole column of work, Sirius replied, "I figure it's never too early to start these things."

"I see. Are you writing these as Padfoot or Sirius Black? Or maybe a pseudonym you haven't informed us about yet?"

Sirius had looked vaguely troubled. "I dunno. Would you write yours as Moony?"

Lupin pretended to look thoughtful. "Hmm... yes, I can see it now. 'I'm Moony and I have an undeniable urge to rip people limb from limb when I see them.' Nah, you better stick to your real name. And that figure's wrong, Wormtail, you'd better check it"

Grunting frustratedly, Peter crossed out another column. "I never should've taken Arithmancy! Bloody awful!"

"The point is," Sirius had continued placidly, "that the memoirs of one Sirius Black will be a glowing homage and nothing else."

"As if I expected anything else," Remus had said, collapsing on his bed and rubbing the heels of his palms into his eyes.

James finally put the Snitch away. "What do you mean by 'glowing homage,' exactly?"

Sirius explained that, while writing memoirs, one is always expected to blow up the importance of himself, "it's just what you _do_ when you write memoirs." He told them that these were the types of things you learn when brought up in a "privileged" home such as his.

Remus had not thought of that night in the dormitory for so long, but now that he did, he thought he'd do what Sirius had said, figuring it might take his mind off things and give him a way to spend his hours. So he had requested to Bridget that she give him the writing utensils. She had been confused at first, but he had explained it to her and she had obliged.

He continued writing:

"He does not know what has happened or what will, but he is quite certain that his Lady Love--,"

He snorted, knowing how much Aurelia would appreciate her title. A glowing homage indeed. A glowing homage written in third person seemed so incredibly stupid, but that had been one of Sirius' rules for writing memoirs, and besides, he was only doing this as a way to entertain himself.

"His Lady Love will be able to find something out about the situation, as he has ample faith in her ability to discern things from rather sticky situations. And besides. Something's bound to happen soon.

"Right?"

_We need help, the Poet reckoned._

-Edward Dorn

"You've got to get a certain flick of the wrist about these things, you know," he told her, placing his hand on hers to demonstrate.

"Like this?" asked Belinda, flicking her wrist with youthful abandon.

"Mhm, you got it," said Simon, standing back and blushing slightly.

Aurelia sat on the couch and looked up at the pair from over her parchment, while Alan stood at the doorway feeling, to his surprise, a hint of jealousy.

"Good lord, you don't have to teach the girl how to duel," said Aurelia, writing on the parchment. "It'll only aggravate her."

Belinda looked offended. "_Aggravate me?_ How would it aggravate me?"

Aurelia looked at her now. "It aggravates _me_, how's that?" she asked in a voice that could be considered a sneer.

The other woman opened her mouth and then closed it again. "Right. No more lessons, then, Simon."

The young man shrugged. "Whatever. I just figured it would be useful to touch up a bit on dueling if we, ten humble werewolves and a pretty damsel, choose to take on Umbridge and her deathly minions on our lonesome. But all right. I'm starving. I'll get us some takeout. Any good places round here, Alan?"

Alan sat down on the couch as well. "There's a Chinese place down the block, how's that?"

"That'll do. You want to come with, Belinda?"

"Um, sure..."

Their voices faded from the hall, and brother and sister were alone, the only sound being the scratching of the quill from Aurelia. Finally, she let out an exclamation of frustration.

"It's useless!"

"What's useless?" he asked her without any real conviction.

"Never mind, I just don't know how to ask it without sounding like we're practically _begging_ him for help."

Normally, Alan would have poked and prodded her about what she was doing, whatever it may be, but today he did not say anything. Aurelia found the lack of argument disconcerting, for she looked over the expression on his face, quite forgetting about her struggles with the phrasing of the letter. "You all right?" she asked. He looked very preoccupied, and, if her eyes weren't deceiving her, a little depressed.

He shrugged. "Guess. Just a little down. We haven't gotten very far on the Butler thing so far, have we? And you still don't want to ask Belinda if she's heard of him."

Aurelia shrugged. "Listen, Alan, we have to be sure we can _trust _her first."

"Oh, bloody hell, you just don't like her that's all it is, isn't it Aurelia?"

Aurelia's lips formed a perfect straight line on her face. "Maybe, but that doesn't have anything to do with it."

"Yes it does. You don't like her even though she could help us find Remus."

Aurelia's eyes narrowed. "Just what makes you so sure she could?"

"Come off it, Aurelia, she works in the place, there's a good chance she's heard the goings-on and general..."

"General what, Alan?"

"Stuff, that's what. Like the Butler fellow Billings told us about. He's the one Remus saw in the Ministry and in the park both times."

"So?"

"He was with Umbridge both times, wasn't he? Whatever's happening here has got something to do with her, we know that, don't we? And Belinda works at the Ministry, she's got ins, as we say."

"She could just as easy be a plant from Umbridge. We just have to tiptoe around her for a while, that's all I'm saying. And I don't dislike her as much as you think I do. I just...don't like _titchy_ people."

"That's brilliant, coming from you. When are they coming again?"

"20 minutes. Hope Simon and Little Miss Titchy will think to get enough Chinese for everyone."

"Shut up, Aurelia."

Aurelia was being dreadfully unfair to Belinda, Alan thought, who actually had tried to spy a little on Umbridge for the last couple few days at work.

"I tried to sit a few seats closer to her at lunch the other day," she had confided in Alan that morning. "I didn't see anything odd or something cool like that, but still, the thrill was..." she trailed off, seemingly not sure of how to describe it.

"Thrilling?" he had offered.

She had smiled shyly at him. "That's it." Perhaps it was just the darkness of her skin that caused it, but her teeth were incredibly white. She must look in the mirror in the morning and get blinded by those things, Alan had thought. It had been morning and he had invited her for breakfast at the flat (the flat being Remus and Aurelia's, Simon having dubbed "the base of operations"), deciding to explain some things out to her. The things Aurelia hadn't forbidden him to tell, of course. Nothing about the conference with Billings and not too much about what Remus had seen in the park and the Ministry. That would come later. Despite the restrictions on what they could speak of, Alan was determined to have a good conversation with her nonetheless. The first girl to come literally knocking on his door in _ages_ and his sister has to do everything she can to antagonize her. Honestly.

"Do all of the werewolves in Britain live in London?" she has asked suddenly.

"Yes," he told her from the stove, taking out the skillet.

"I thought so," she said, watching him as he cracked three eggs into it, where they floated and sizzled, miniature versions of the sun now rising in the eastern sky.

"Why?"

"The bill. It says you have to. Live in London, I mean."

Alan had nodded gravely. "Yes, but we did even before the D. Umb. Act."

"The--what, sorry?"

He explained the origins of the D. Umb. Act and then decided to tell her exactly the circumstances that had brought the gaggle of werewolves to one particular city. "You see, four years ago some Potions egghead from...I think it was Armenia, funnily enough. At any rate, some Potions guru comes up with this serum that tames the minds of werewolves. It can't stop them from changing altogether, but it makes them keep their own psyche, though I have to admit in my sister's case it's probably up for debate if it makes her much better."

Belinda had grinned only slightly. Aurelia was in the other room constructing letters (she did a lot of that these days), opting out of the meal.

"Anyway, it's a big load off all of us, because I don't know how much you know about werewolves, but without potion, believe me, it's not a picnic for anyone involved. So this potion comes out, but the thing is you need all these incredibly complex ingredients and to add them in just the right order spaced just perfectly apart from each other or you'll keel over right after you drink. Not something to be meddled with lightly, obviously. The Ministry, seeing this as a matter of public safety more than anything else, offers to make it for us. At that same time, incidentally, our father dies. Aurelia and I don't really have anything holding us to the countryside anymore, so we move to London."

"Countryside?"

"We lived on a farm with our parents. When we moved to London, we met the others, the other werewolves, which I found remarkably interesting. I guess I had never really thought of anyone else being like Aurelia and me, I always thought it was our little _thing_, you know? But then all of a sudden there ten other people were who were exactly like me, which may not seem like a great number to you, but to me it was amazing."

"That's where you met Remus?"

Alan nodded. "Yes. He was always a bit of an odd one, he was very quiet. But very smart. I liked him."

They lapsed into a rather depressing pause, until Alan spoke again.

"I remember, now that I'm thinking about it again, how Remus was so uncomfortable with the whole setup. He didn't like having to depend on the Ministry as much as we had to, and now that I think about it, he was probably right. I mean, look what they turned around and did. Back then all of us lived in London because it was convenient. Now we have to."

Belinda nodded. "Umbridge."

"Not _just _Umbridge, no," Alan started thoughtfully, starting some coffee now. "It really was more of a whole attitude about us, about werewolves that I just didn't see because I had grown up on a farm my entire life before then. I didn't understand how people felt, but Remus did, so he saw it better than I did. I'd never _liked_ being a werewolf before, but I had never felt _ashamed_ of it, like they expected you to feel. I thought it was just something you couldn't control, like having terrible acne or really ugly hair.

"Or course, then I realized that people can charm away their acne and get potions for their greasy hair. But you can't stop being a werewolf, so I was pretty much screwed for life, as were we all."

"Oh."

He really hadn't meant to talk that much, to sound so self-pitying, because in actuality, he wasn't so. Though, he knew suddenly, he had now probably outlined their situation her with a little too much accuracy. So when she changed the subject he was quite relieved.

"Just how many are there, anyway? Werewolves, I mean."

"Ten," he said, putting the plate of eggs in front of her.

"_Ahem_."

Alan turned to the doorway with dread. Any attempt at a pleasant conversation with Belinda would be hopeless if his sister was in the room.

"What?" he asked, giving Aurelia a look he hope she would interpret meant he wanted her to be nice or get lost.

"There are eleven werewolves, Alan," she said in a soft voice that surprised him. "You've forgotten Remus."

Alan, nonplussed, stared at her. "R-right. I forgot. Eleven."

"And they're all coming today at five. I've just written all of them. The Manettes wanted to have us all meet at their house, but I told them it's got to be here. And Simon said he'd be here early."

Simon Troubadour was the youngest of all the werewolves (he would be only five years out of Hogwarts had he attended it the full seven years), a rather rogue gentleman, he'd been expelled from most wizarding schools in the English-speaking world for what he described as "repeated infractions," though no one was quite clear what exactly these were. At any rate, he was "always good for a fight," as described by Alan, which made him ideal for what they planned to do (whatever it was they planned to do).

That was how Belinda came to meet every single werewolf in England, save for Remus Lupin, by the time that Saturday was over. After the Callard siblings and Simon Troubadour (who helped her touch up on "the finer points of dueling," as he called them), she met Marie and Maylor Manette, the French married couple, Orion Barclay, another man about Remus and Aurelia's age, and the three Muggle werewolves, Nema Carew, Alex Gold (a younger man who wore a shirt with the word "GREENPEACE" sprawled across it), and delicate little Jamie MacDonald, who looked as if the faintest breeze could knock her over. They all sat around the sofa in the stuffy little flat, eating the Chinese food supplied by Simon and Belinda.

"So, basically, it all centers around Umbridge, is that it?" asked Jamie carefully, trying to grasp the situation as best she could.

"That's it. Whether the Ministry itself is involved any further I couldn't tell you," Aurelia said.

"But these dementor things you brought up...what are they?" asked Alex. He'd spent a great part of his life in the company of wizards, even though he wasn't one, but the only thing he'd really discerned about the dementors was that they scared the crap out of everyone who met them, or

"Prison guards. They...can steal your soul from you, should they wish," said Aurelia rather shakily, and while she didn't want to let on the prospect of it all scared her.

Alan looked ready to say something, but suddenly felt something land on his hand. It was a note deposited on top of his fingers by Belinda, who sat next to him.

"They-they're not going to do that to him?" asked Nema uncertainly.

_They're listening, _the note read_. Don't say anything. Pass it on._

"I don't know," said Aurelia soberly, picking at her egg drop soup. "That's the worst part. I just don't know."

Alan looked at her, bewildered, so he grabbed for the pen she had used.

_Who's listening?_

The room was silent as Belinda wrote one word.

_Butler._

Nodding, Alan managed to insert it on top of Simon's spring roll. Simon stared at it and seemed to take in what it said without much trouble, for he passed it to Jamie, who read it, her brown eyes widening. "How do you know that?" she asked before she could contain herself.

"Know what?" asked Aurelia, who had been staring very hard in front of her trying to keep from showing more emotion than she had to.

Jamie realized her blunder. "N-nothing," and passed the note to her neighbor.

Eventually the hastily written note made its rounds to all eleven people in the room, and none of them could speak. Eventually, Belinda wrote again on her napkin.

_He's parked in the car across the street and put a charm on the house so he can hear what we're saying. I saw him do it when we came in but I wasn't sure how to tell you. What should we do?_

All of that was written in a hurried hand, and Belinda looked very scared. Alan didn't know what to do, so he passed the note around again.

None of them had spoken for at least a minute now, and Alan supposed if someone was eavesdropping on them he or she was probably suspicious by now from the lack of conversation. Finally, Alan stood up after scribbling another note on the paper.

_ I'm getting him._

Butler was frustrated, forced to spen time parked in the car across the street again. He had remembered the highly useful Listener's Charm and was now using it to eavesdrop on the werewolves. Their voices floated in his car so he could hear every word. So far he had found they did not know anymore than he thought they did, much to his relief. Then, all of a sudden they had stopped talking much to his chagrin. He shrugged it off and wrote a note to Umbridge detailing to her what he'd heard.

_ Nothing new here_.

Flushed with his victory, he couldn't help but feel a little downhearted when he looked out his window and saw Alan Callard standing there with his wand pointed at his heart. Success, he thought as the red-haired werewolf told him to get out of the car, really was fleeting.

_Number 6: What do you want?_

_Number 2: Information._

_Number 6: Whose side are you on?_

_Number 2: That would be telling. We want information._

_Number 6: You won't get it!_

_Number 2: By hook or by crook...we will._

-The Prisoner

Bridget had refused to tell Remus anything, even after he had grabbed her wrist in the cell, the look in his eyes a hard one, telling her in what she thought must be a very uncharacteristically stern way _he wanted information._

_Don't we all?_ she thought ruefully.

She so wanted to tell him, she would have loved to, in fact. She would have loved to tell him in aching detail how exactly she had come to be there, how he had, what was happening to all of them at that moment. She could have told with confidence that once, in her a past life, she had been a maid/nurse. Now she was the maid/nurse, that's what she was on the Hill. That's what he'd made her, and she couldn't very well be anything else, could she? They had made her the maid, and that was what she had to be. Maids don't talk. They serve.

Which was why Remus Lupin received no excess information from his Jailer. His legs grew steadily better, he was almost happy to admit, and by the time he'd been on the Hill a week they were fully cured from their near encounter with being splinched, much to his relief. That did nothing to soothe his dreams, which were growing worse. Before he had felt like had been floating in the darkness listening to a voice whisper indiscernible frightening things into his ear. Now he felt that the voice was almost shouting, yet he still could not hear. He still did not understand their meaning, and it terrified him even more. By the time his legs were cured the dreams had reached such a pitch he was staying up hours and hours into the night, writing into his "memoirs" before drifting off to sleep reluctantly.

The day that Remus Lupin's legs became fully cured was the day he met the Speaker.

A new day had begun.

A/N: Like I said, explanation next chapter. I was trying to create a mood here, at which I probably failed miserably, but oh well. Review, even if you want to tell me how crappy I am. I can take it. I swear.


	9. The Storm Begins

Disclaimer: It turns out that since the time I wrote Chapter 8 JKR transferred ownership of Harry Potter and all related trademarks and insignia over to me, a humble American 14 year-old aspiring writer. Psych! I'm just kidding. I own nothing but my OCs.

A/N: Thanks to all who reviewed. I feel so lucky to have such great people who review nearly everything I write. Thanks so much!

Chapter 9 

_The Storm Begins_

_Who plays it cool_

_by making his world_

_a little_

_colder?_

-"Hey Jude"

the Beatles

_From the Diary of Bridget Talbert_

27 May, 1935 

_Dear Journal,_

_ Sister Eustacia has given me this book cos she wants me to rite my thoughts and mussings in it. She sez I read well but my riting and spelling are both "de-plor-ab-le." I asked her what that meant? She toled me to look it up in the large dic-tion-nar-y that sits on a podium in the library. But I didnt. I shant place much trust in books that way more than I do. But from the way she said it, it means I must rite very much to improove. _

_ Sister Eustacia says that Im supposed to write about meself in here. So I will. My name is Bridget Abigail Talbert. I was born on 24 January 1928. I live in St. Abnernathy's Orphanage for Young Boys and Girls. I dont remember my mother, for I was quite small when she died. She caught tu-berc-u-lo-sis and simply "wasted away," according to Mrs. Crenshaw, who was my mothers nurse while she was ill. My father had died as well, he drowned in the deep blak lake thats on the easterly side of the Hill. That lake is very deep and his body was never found. I dont like to go there very often._

_ To-day me and Tom went out into the woods together. Tom is my best friend. He doesn't get along well with the other boys. Just me. I'm not sure why, but we're always together. Perhaps because I never get along with Lucie Wren and most of the other girls (they say my embroidery is clumsy and my skin as rough as leather, becos I supose it is.) To-day me and Tom went to the brook. It has been very hot lately so we stripped down to our knickers and went in. We let the current take us down it til we reached the meadow. Beyond the meadow is the Hill. The Hill gives me the shivers as well. I know it sounds silly, journal, but sometimes I think of the Hill as the monster that was always in my dreams when I was a baby, like a large sleeping bear that would one day wake up and come after me. Now I'm nearly seven and cant act like that anymore, so I didnt say anything to Tom, because he actually likes the Hill. He sez one day we should climb it. That thought makes me shiver even harder. _

"Ah, now you see, _that_ is beautiful," said Lupin, setting down the old book.

"Is it, now?"

"Well, yes. They make _my _memoirs look like utter cow manure. Wonderful. The musings, oh, excuse me," he consulted the diary again, "_mussings _are ever so intriguing. Sublime, even."

Bridget grinned wickedly. "Now don't poke fun."

At about midafternoon of that day, the old man had gone into Mr. Lupin's cell and come out an hour later. Bridget had stood outside the cell door after he'd left, having an inner battle with herself. On one hand, she was dying to go in and see the werewolf but on the other she wasn't sure if she really would _want_ to, dreading what she might see. In the end, she went in. Formed between them was a sort of nightly chat, where little was said but much was eaten. They ate their dinners and talked about whatever a Muggle woman and a werewolf being kept in a cave together can think to talk about.

Today it had been particularly insightful. "Do you like beef casserole?" she asked, pushing the door open with her rear and carrying a tray of steaming food.

"Do I _like_ beef casserole? Bridget, I'm surprised, haven't I expressed nothing but positive comments about your cooking so far?" He was sitting upright on the cot, scribbling on the legal pad she had given him several days ago and swinging his now completely usable legs over the edge. "Honestly, I'm starved."

She set down the tray, eyeing him warily. "Mr. Lupin? Are you quite all right?"

"Good lord, Bridget," he muttered, still writing hurriedly on the pad. "I'm not your grandfather or your rich uncle or something of the like. I mean, I'm not _that_ old, am I? Do I reek of age? No, don't answer that. I'm sure I do. But that's not the point. The point is, I want some of your delicious beef casserole very badly. Thank you," he said, taking the dish she handed him. "And I think we can call each other by our names now, can't we? I don't call you Miss…Whatsit. I don't know your surname."

"I don't know your Christian name." She did in fact, but she had a very scary thought suddenly and she wanted to make sure it was not true.

"Well, then, an exchange is in order. Your surname?"

"I haven't used it in a number of years. Hold on."

She ran out of the cell, down the twisting stone corridor to the smallish room where she slept. Tucked under her bed wrapped in a dusty little handkerchief were a number of small momentos, including a brown leather book. She grabbed this and went back to the cell.

"There you go. Read that, go on."

He had, but just the first entry. After the initial comment, he'd asked, "So it's Talbert?"

She nodded. "You?" she asked tensely, dreading the answer.

"Remus." She let out a silent sigh of relief. That was good. He knew who he was. He added thoughtfully, scratching his chin with the ballpoint pen she'd given him (it was a curious habit she'd observed he had), "If I were in anyway true to Roman mythology I would have a brother named Romulus. But then I'd have to get into an argument and be murdered by him as well, so, all in all, I think it's better I don't, don't you?"

"Oh, certainly," she agreed, digging into the beef casserole. "Remus Lupin. Interesting name."

"I've always thought so." He still had not out away the legal pad and was tapping the pen on it, more as a nervous twitch than anything else. "So you were named after your grandmother?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Oh." He stared at the gooey food on his plate. "A great-aunt, maybe?"

"No-o. Why would you think that?"

His eyes widened and said his next words as if trying to persuade her to speak logically, as if he was a man who still had the urge to persuade people to speak logically. "Because the woman who wrote this had the same name as you."

"She should. That's who it is."

"Oh, certainly," he said, starting nibble at a piece of beef. "You were born in 1928, correct? So you're…64. Certainly." He ate bit of beef and then asked earnestly, "Bridget, do you think werewolves are stupid? Because most of us aren't. And in any case, we do know how to tell the relative age of a person."

"Do you? How old do you think I am?"

"Oh, I'd guess about 20, 25."

"Certainly not 64."

"Certainly not."

"Well, you're wrong on both guesses."

"Am I? So, may I ask, Miss Talbert, and I hope I don't sound rude, how old are you?"

"65."

"I see." Remus stared at the casserole for a moment, and Bridget let the silence wash around them comfortably, and she ate her dinner some more. Finally he asked very exasperatedly, "How the hell is that even _possible_? If you're a Muggle and--,"

"Mr. Lup—er, Remus," she cut in. "You don't look well. We don't have to talk about this anymore, it doesn't matter. I shouldn't have brought the diary out in the first place, as I doubt you care." She made to grab the book from him, but he stopped her.

"No," he said, drawing himself up taller and staring at her. His legal pad and dinner plate slid off his lap. "Bridget, there's something here I don't get. Take that back, there's a lot of things here I don't get, but I'll start with one. You had to look at this diary to remember you own surname?"

Bridget sank back onto the floor from the half-standing position she had been in. "I suppose…I've been here a long time, Mis--,"

"Bridget, I think if you're in your sixties you're more than entitled than to call me by my Christian name."

"A long time," she continued. "If you stay here long enough you can sort of…forget who you are. He sort of has that effect on you. That's why I asked you for your name. I was afraid you wouldn't know it. After he came in, I was afraid you'd forget. Remus, what happened? What did he do?"

To her surprise, he started laughing.

"What? Why are you--,"

"I just find it funny," he began, still chuckling, "that suddenly you're the one begging me to tell you something."

"Oh yes," she spat sarcastically. "That's _hilarious_. Simply _laughable._"

"Oh, don't get bitter. I wasn't laughing at you." He picked up his dinner plate again.

"That's what they all say. Or I suppose what they used to say. I've haven't seen most of them since I was about 24." She stared pensively at him, and he ate more of his dinner. "But are you going to tell me what happened?"

"Honestly?" he asked, still not looking up from his plate. "I slept through most of it."

That evening, Simon Troubadour broke the national record for quickest possession of a potion from the black market. He had left the residence of Remus Lupin (who, of course, was not there) and Aurelia Callard at about quarter past seven and had returned with the Veritaserum in hand roughly an hour later. In order to preserve some sense of mystery, the various potions dealers young Simon visited in such quick succession will not be documented (at least, not yet) here, but if Simon's hour-long adventure were it would serve only to credit the young werewolf's haggling abilities and perhaps mildly impress upon you that there are many odd chaps out and about in Wizarding London at this time of night. That said, we will proceed to the scene Simon left behind him, that is nine anxious werewolves, one highly confused young woman, and a small dark man who refused to speak a word.

"Do you think we've given him enough money?" asked Maylor apprehensively to the Callard siblings, Orion Barclay, Belinda, and his wife.

"I should think so," said Orion. "I've enormous faith in Simon's ability to get a good deal." (Indeed, this faith was well placed.)

Marie shook her head emphatically. "I still don't think we should be getting mixed up in this business at all. Black market and such. It's so…_illegal._"

Aurelia gave her an almost pitying look. "Marie, dear, do you see this?" She pointed to Dalen Butler, who sat bound to a chair in the corner, watching them all sullenly. "We've just taken a bleeding _hostage._ I doubt a little black market Veritaserum is going to matter much." She thought a moment. "It's like stabbing someone in the chest with a sword and then giving them a paper cut. Do you expect it to matter _that_ much?"

"Good analogy."

"Thank you."

Simon Apparated into the doorway between the front entryway and the sitting room where they all sat. He did not say anything but merely held out the crystalline bottle he clutched in his hands (an unsavory-looking character in a long cloak had tried to wrestle it out of his hands earlier, so a death grip seemed to him the only logical way to hold it.) Aurelia took it from him and the second after she did so he collapsed on the couch, without much regard to the fact three other people were already sitting in it.

"Ugh. Remind me to _never _order drinks in a pub where the peanuts are older than I am," said Simon, though much of his face was buried in Jamie MacDonald's knee.

"Get off me," she said. "So you got it?"

"Cost quite a bit," he answered, sitting up and squeezing comfortably between Nema and Jamie.

"How much?"

Simon appeared to be doing some quick calculating in his head. "Roughly an arm, a leg, and a pint of virgin blood."

"Where'd you get it?" asked Aurelia, who had uncorked the bottle and was sniffing it.

"What, the potion or the virgin blood?"

Everyone stared at him.

He squirmed uncomfortably. "No one can take a joke around here tonight, have you noticed that? I got in a back alley behind a pub in Bristol."

"Bristol? You had to go that far?"

Simon shrugged. "Such is the price of success. Now, how would you like to go about this?"

The awkwardness of the situation was this: none of those present had the smallest inkling of how to deal with a hostage. They certainly couldn't see themselves forcing their kidnapee to drink something, but then they couldn't just politely request he drink it and then act surprised when he threw the glass containing the precious potion at the wall in defiance. Thus it was with a highly reluctant air that Jamie held Butler's mouth open while Aurelia poured the Veritaserum down his throat.

Nema Carew sat back and watched with the rest as the bound man got a vacant look in his eyes. Nema was a stock girl at the local grocers' so she found all of this highly fascinating, if a bit reckless.

"Can you hear me?" asked Alan, his voice steady and determined. They only had so much time before the Veritaserum's effects would start to wear off, after all.

The man still looked quite blank, but he answered in a low, gravelly voice that reminded Nema strongly of Barry White. "Yes."

"What's your name?"

"Dalen Butler."

Alan asked, "Where is Remus Lupin?"

"In a cave."

Silence.

Alan began, sounding a little more shaken. "Would you care to elaborate on that a bit?"

"No."

Aurelia rolled her eyes and scoffed. "Alan, you can't phrase it like _that_. Of course he doesn't want to _elaborate_. You're so wishy-washy."

"Shut--," he began.

"Do the words _'time limit'_ mean anything to you two?" asked Simon, amid similar protests from the rest of the group. "Just keep going, Alan."

Taking another deep breath and casting a dirty look at his sister, he continued. "Which cave? Town, village, _country_, maybe?"

Butler named a small village none of them had ever heard of. The cave was apparently in a mountain called, simply, "the Hill," which looked out over the town, which was in a rural area outside of Newcastle.

"What's he doing there?"

"It begins about a year or two ago, when Mr. Billings started that research on souls and their practical applications. It wasn't a new idea, the Druids and other ancient magic peoples had knew about it for centuries, they even used it to their advantage."

_Druids?_ thought Nema. The funny people with the long white robes and all that? She was getting into something with _Druids_? A friend of hers had been kidnapped by _Druids? _Remus Lupin, the mild-mannered man who had explained everything she ever wanted to know (and some stuff she didn't) about the Wizarding world and how it worked to her a few years ago just after she had been bitten? _That_ Remus? _Those _Druids? Nema was so wrapped up in these incredulous thoughts she barely heard Alan's next question, which was quite short.

"How?"

"They'd take a deceased person and try to summon his soul back to Earth."

Alan's brow furrowed. "What did they want to do that for?"

"They thought that the soul itself could be beneficial to the environment it's called back to," began Butler, and though he still sounded highly monotonous, Nema could hear that professional fascination some people got when talking about their jobs, though in this case it wasn't some smarmy arse at a party bragging about being a successful barrister or accountant or something of the like. It was a bit more sinister, particularly as it involved a friend of hers. "It was thought to ensure good crops, rain, what have you. It was a common practice for centuries, taking dead bodies and trying to talk to their souls, to see if they could get them back to Earth. But the practice died out during the different invasions the area underwent. But it didn't all die out, especially at the Hill."

Dalen Butler went onto explain that in his hometown growing up before leaving for Hogwarts he'd heard numerous rumors for years about the Hill, ghost stories, stuff around the fire, about practices that went on there, about how there were so-called "little people" who lived on the Hill who would kidnap little children and sometimes even grown adults to use for these sort of _things_. He, Dalen, had researched the subject and found that the magic the ancient wizards would practice was oftentimes preformed on the Hill, and before the Roman invasion it could almost be considered a "metropolis" of sorts. There were even rumors that the wizards on the Hill had found out the secret to immortality.

"That's impossible!" said Alan, quite forgetting his composure.

"That's what I thought at first as well. That it was just a myth, something the Muggles added to their ghost stories. But it's true. I've seen it with my own eyes."

Another silence, but Belinda decided to pipe up suddenly. Something was bothering her. Immortal ancient wizards and human sacrifice were certainly not the first thing she thought of when Dolores Umbridge came to mind.

"What's Madam Umbridge to do with it, then?"

"She heard of the soul theory from the theorist working on it, Bayford Billings and later from me. Billings had studied the practice and thought that perhaps instead of the soul being used to bring good crops or Muggle rubbish like that, it could be used as, a…well, a commercial commodity."

To Nema's right there was a snort. It was Alex.

"Right, I can see it now…Mother Umbridge's All-Natural Soul in a Bottle. Made from 100% slaughtered werewolves, I shouldn't wonder."

Mr. Butler shook his head again. "Stranger things have been sold. Some people buy…you know, mooncalf uteruses because they think it will make them better dancers."

Nema had never heard of a mooncalf, but she pulled a face regardless. "That's disgusting. Just like this. Why do you want werewolves, anyway?"

Dalen explained. "Madam Umbridge had two reasons. One, the fact that if a bunch of werewolves go missing, people are more likely to, well, not care that much. Maybe even regard it as almost a blessing."

"I'm beginning to see where the stealing of people's souls is coming in," observed Jamie MacDonald sardonically as she wrote down verbatim what he said on a notebook. "Bit of a lax moral code coming to light here, wouldn't you say?" (Jamie was a secretary and saw the necessity to take down what was said, "even if no one else does," she had said sniffily. No one else saw the necessity to tell her that they could charm a quill to do much the same thing.)

"No more interruptions," Alan told her, and urged Butler to continue.

"Also because of what I suppose you heard from Mr. Billings," he continued, as though Jamie had not spoken. "Their mental composition. I doubt I could explain it to you without getting overly technical. To put it simply, a werewolf's mind has two parts, a wolf part and a human part and while that first part only makes an appearance once a month, it still is enough to effect you soul and your brain, even that other, non-wolf part. It's a highly interesting area of study, I assure you."

"I'm sure," muttered Simon. "I can only imagine how very _potent_ my soul is."

Alan scratched his head. There were a lot of things he wanted to ask but none of them were directed at Butler. He wanted to discuss this with his sister and his fellows, but now they still had something else to find out…

"Back to Remus, then," he said hastily. "What's he--is he--,"

"Is he dead?" asked Aurelia sharply, making even herself uncomfortable in the silence that followed.

Dalen paused in what appeared to be dramatic effect, but was in fact because the potion was beginning to wear off a small bit and he was actually struggling to keep his mouth shut. He found in the end, however, that he couldn't.

"No."

"What's happening to him?"

"I don't know."

"_What?!_"

Butler explained.

"The man who Madam Umbridge sort of hired to er, well, to _do it_, he sort of…tossed me out. Won't let me back in the Hill. So I'm out of the loop."

"Whoa, just hold on a second here," started Simon, and he held up his hands in a sort of stop-everything sort of manner. "Are you saying that first, you _murdered_ a man. Just flat out murdered him, you and Umbridge did, just to make a few bucks."

"Yes, we did. Umbridge never liked Adams much anyway, even before he got his bite, and when he did she pressured him to resign. She wasn't too disappointed when he died."

"How lovely," commented Jamie, unable to restrain herself from speaking. "Like I said, lax moral code."

"Anyway, we sort of…well, _I_ sort of bungled the whole thing up. You see, the process needs a personal item of the person in question, and the watch I nicked didn't belong to Adams, so it didn't work. But then the Speaker got a new idea, so he brought Lupin to the Hill on a full moon and planned to do something else. But I never knew quite what. He, er, got a bit _sore_ at me and made me leave the Hill."

"So basically," said Simon, "you killed one of our friends and kidnapped another one and you didn't even do it _right?_"

"Yes, I suppose you could say…"

"Merlin, we couldn't even get a _good_ evil villain," said Simon, standing up and walking to the icebox in the kitchen. He dug around in it and got out a few more of his treasured spring rolls. "We do always get the bad luck, don't we?"

"Tell that to Remus," Aurelia said soberly, and she grabbed a spring roll.

"We should."

"We'll leave then?"

Belinda sat up straight. "_Leave? _Where?"

Aurelia raised her eyebrows at her. "To this village. What was it called again?"

Jamie flipped back through her notes. "Little Hangleton."

A/N: There! Finally! Don't worry, I'm going to add more with Remus later, this was the long-awaited (fanfare please) EXPLANATION CHAPTER.

You see, the whole thing came about when my dad had this friend who worked at the University of Minnesota's music department. This friend would come over for dinner a lot (he must've really liked my mom's mashed potatoes or something) and would explain to me (I was still in elementary school) over said mashed potatoes his life's love, that was old English ballads (the guy was rather odd.) Anyway, there was this ballad called "Tam Lin" which was a ballad about a woman who saved her lover from this evil fairy queen. Being the morbid seven year-old I was (obviously before my Harry Potter days) found the whole thing _fascinating _and often toyed with the idea for stories (I was always writing, even when I was seven). Fast forward a few years and I got the idea to somehow incorporate it into my Lupin story. Perhaps the idea always seemed better in my head than it did on paper (or the screen, I guess.) I think I've explained it as well as possible for now, but if something doesn't make sense, please review or email me to tell me what it is.

Thanks!

Oh, and there was just one more thing: someone who reviewed a long time ago (I won't say who you are) got the canon character that I refer to here and in an earlier chapter. Some of you probably got it by now. Do you?


	10. Culpability

* * *

A/N: My uncle gave me this secondhand clunky laptop for my birthday in June. One would think that this would speed up my writing, but for this story it certainly didn't. Though it was good for those late-night binges of writing. (See The Parlor, The Great Social Equalizer, and The Next Great Adventure.)

I spent most of the summer with the real Dalen Butler...trying to catch a Crumple-Horned Snorkack. Yeah, let's go with that. Apologies for the wait. Oh, and how could I forget my old friend:

Disclaimer: Even with my newly-caught Crumple-Horned Snorkack I haven't a claim to Harry Potter, nor to his lovely universe, nor to his even lovelier future DADA teacher.

Chapter 10

Culpability

When you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

Remus was sitting cross-legged on his cot, staring into the face of Dolores Umbridge.

"The thing about Madam Umbridge," he was saying to her smug form, which sat with it's stubby legs crossed on a chair opposite him, "is that she really didn't _terrify_ me as much as irk me powerfully." Remus looked around at what the scene had changed into, no longer his dank and stuffy cell but the Wizengamot court he had seen the Werewolf Protection Act passed last fall. "The same goes with this whole courtroom setup. So unless you which to _annoy_ my soul out of me..."

A wide grin stretched over the toad-like face. "Fair point," said the Speaker, and let out a girlish laugh. "Though these things are rather entertaining to do once in awhile."

Lupin nodded seriously. "Yes, I suppose they are. My friend has a cousin whose a Metamorphamagus, goodness knows _she_ had fun with it at every possible opportunity." Lupin stopped for a moment to marvel that he was attempting a conversation with Dolores Umbridge. (Even if it was only a phantasm of her, it still seemed tactless and he chastised himself for it.) "Anyway, is there a point to all this?"

More grinning. "Most likely not. Would you like me to stop?"

Remus shook his head. "Doesn't matter." He thought some more. "Is it really necessary, though? To do this? All the coaxing and...and coddling?"

Dolores Umbridge shrugged, and as she did so the room changed back to stone and the hated Ministry employee to an old man. "Perhaps you should ask Bridget."

"Bridget? What's she going to tell me other than how's she been led to the fountain of youth by a strange old man who's kept her in a cage for fifty years?"

The old man looked surprised, but only faintly so. "I would've thought you would want to hear that. But if you'd like to hear something that might make things go along faster here, I suggest you ask her about Tam Lin."

And the Speaker left.

* * *

"You're very strange," she said.

"No, I'm very ordinary," said Arthur, "but some very strange things have happened to me. You could say I'm more differed from than differing. 

-Douglas Adams, _The Restaurant at the End of the Universe_

"All right, all right, _fine_. I'll tell you, but promise you'll read it tomorrow?" asked Bridget, setting the tray of steak-and-kidney pie on the floor and handing him a plate.

"What, your diary?"

"Yes."

"All-all right." Remus looked surprised, but didn't let it shake him. "So go on. Tam Lin. Old English ballad."

"Is that all you know?"

"That's about it," said Remus, making a very big effort to sound amiable.

"Don't really delve into Old English ballads in magic schools, do they?"

"No. I'll write the headmaster a strongly worded letter requesting a change in curriculum on the subject if you like." His efforts to sound amiable, he discovered, were quite terrible.

"It's all right. So what do you want to know?"

Remus thought. "What is it? Besides a ballad, I mean. What's it about?"

She grabbed the pillow she often sat on (because the floor got cold after awhile). "Tam Lin," she said, "is a true story that ended up in a Muggle fairy tale about a man who was kidnapped--"

"I sympathize."

She frowned. "Is there a word," she inquired airily, but not masking her annoyance, "for men who interrupt too much?"

"I probably could make one up for you."

"No, I think the word is just _rude_." She glared a little bit, and Remus tried act full of repent. "Do stop interrupting. It doesn't make things go any quicker..."

"A thousand apologies. Go on. So, poor old Tam Lin gets kidnapped by...let me guess, a scary old man."

She still appeared faintly annoyed, though at this her mouth twitched a tad bit. "Well, I suppose there could've been one or two creepy old men, there are in every community... because that's what it was, you see. A community or magical people living separate from the Muggles, but every so often they would take one of the Muggles for...well, I think you rather know what."

Remus considered this for a second (something he had decided he was doing far too much of, as all this considering didn't seem to be getting him anywhere), then hastily tried to change the subject. "Right...where was this?" His voice shook slightly, so he made a business of clearing his throat. "I mean, was it here? Just a very long time ago?"

"On the Hill? No, and you'll see why in a minute. But this was in a wood, though. That's where all the wizard in the area lived. Well, it _was_. They all had to leave."

"Why?"

"Because Tam Lin got away. He didn't buy the farm, he escaped." She paused, glad of the rather perplexed look on his face. "I think today you call it, er, _anti-Muggle security._"

He appeared to understand. "Oh. So they liked to kill the Muggles but they didn't want

any of them to come calling the rest of the time."

"That's about it. They all left because the Muggles found out, all because Tam Lin broke out of his trance before they could do him in."

His frown lines deepened. "Trance?"

"That's what they put the Muggles in so they could--so they would do the deed. I suppose that's a bad way to put it."

"That's a horrid way put it," said Remus quietly.

"I know."

They were quiet.

* * *

There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.

-John Fowles 

By the light of a candle, Remus wrote.

"Rather perplexing day, but I suppose that's rather useless to say at this point. Perhaps I will go off on a tangent.

"I wonder, did Sirius continue his memoirs? Even in Azkaban? I never asked him after that night in the dormitory because...well, I'm not sure why I didn't. Now that I think of it, how many things did I ask him back then? Shouldn't I have asked more?

"Anyway, wouldn't it be rather funny if, right at this moment, Sirius and I were both sitting in cages, scribbling away on pieces of paper? (Or I suppose, in his case, parchment, as I doubt such Muggle products like legal pads are available where he is. Actually, it's these Muggle relics I'm using right now that make me suspect that they, like the food, are being pilfered from the village at the base of the Hill. Since it's my understanding that Bridget has not left the Hill in many years and because the Speaker doesn't really strike me as a real frequent grocery shopper, I believe they're being stolen by magic somehow. Except, of course, for the beef casserole, which must come from Heaven, as it's equal with the ambrosia and nectar eaten by the residents of that particular location. I don't think Bridget believed me when I told her this (in much less flowery language, of course) but she looked pleased all the same.)

"But off the subject of my wonderful cook of a Jailer, I see no reason why the dementors wouldn't allow Sirius to have a quill and parchment. I mean, it's not as if he could try to gouge their eyes out with it, is it? I don't think dementors have eyes...

"The above passage is probably one of the many reasons these memoirs would look tremendously stupid were anyone else to read them. I should be hurrying to put down in writing what Bridget has just told me while we ate supper, and instead I'm imagining my convicted murderer of a former friend trying to gouge out a dementor's nonexistent eyes with a quill. Pitiful.

"In any case, Bridget did tell me about Tam Lin, though she suggested I read her diary first. I refused to, however, saying that I'd already been deferred to other sources and that I didn't plan to be deferred anymore. (Her diary, by the way, still sits under my cot next to the pell-mell pile of papers that is my writing here. She left it in here the other day after that first rather. . .tiring situation. I was under the impression she'd just forgotten about it, but now I think she left it in here on purpose.) She held out for a little while longer, but fortunately gave in before I was forced to resort to another compliment of the your-beef-casserole-is-equatable-to-nectar-and-ambrosia variety.

"Did I just use the word equatable? That's not a word. Sweet Merlin, I must be unraveling. I mean, equatable?"

First sign of insanity, isn't it? Making up words?

-Alan Callard

* * *

"The most interesting thing is," said the old man when he returned sometime the next day, "is that now even if the door was wide open I don't think you'd leave."

A heavily exhausted Remus Lupin looked up at the Speaker, who had gray eyes and gray hair and looked, all in all, like he'd been crafted out of a cloudy day, or something else equally _gray_ and depressing. (He made a note to write that down later.) But that, Lupin supposed, was a side effect of living in a cave for an extraordinarily long amount of time. It was likely he was starting to look the same way, for all he knew. There was a dearth of mirrors on the Hill.

At first Lupin blinked slowly, considering a rather scathing reply, then decided to just answer candidly. It was all right to try and poke fun at Bridget, to try and make her annoyed or even slightly peeved, but this was decidedly different. "How do you mean?" he asked.

"I mean that you knew if you left right now you'd feel obligated in a strange way."

"To whom?" he asked, rather knowing the answer.

"Her. You'd feel somewhat obligated to help her, but you couldn't."

"I couldn't," echoed Lupin.

"And if you left her here it would only add more guilt to an already fairly guilty soul."

"Please don't mention souls."

"Mr. Lupin," said the old man patiently, "please do not try and be funny--"

"Yeah, well, that's us werewolves. We don't have much of a sense of humor but Merlin knows we _try_."

"--because it's not making things go faster."

"You keep saying that," said Remus quietly. "Yet I really don't care how fast anything goes. I'm in no rush." His thoughts landed on something Bridget had said once. "Time...doesn't matter much here, does it?"

The Speaker did not answer.

"Anyway," said Lupin, only vaguely aware that he might've stumbled on something important and was now letting it slip away, "you think I would feel culpable if I left Bridget here, all alone with you?"

"Yes. Yes I do."

Lupin frowned. "Am I that easy to read?"

"More or less, yes."

"Yes, that figures." And curiously enough, he didn't try to argue this point at all when the Speaker left and several hours, for the chat had awakened in his mind the issue of culpability.

Did I do anything wrong today or has the world always been like this and I've been too wrapped up in myself to notice?

-Arthur Dent

* * *

"Look, there's no point in leaving for this village _now_, it's too late. If this town is as small as I think it is we'll need Muggle money," said the older man to a group of about a dozen people, and Dalen Butler watched in a bit of a daze, not speaking unless spoken to.

"Fine," said a grumpy-looking woman with red hair. "All right, but first thing in the morning?"

"We'll probably have to wait until afternoon to get a train," observed another man with longish-hair wearing a T-shirt and beat-up jeans.

"Train?" asked the first woman. "Trains are very slow, you know."

"But it's the only way all of us could get up there," piped up a girl with long dark hair sitting towards the back, "because Muggles aren't allowed on the Floo, are they? And obviously me, Alex, and Jamie can't Apparate, and you guys could never get permission for a Portkey., could you?"

The red-haired woman looked a bit surprised. "How d'you know all that?"

"Magical modes of transportation seemed like an interesting thing to ask about at the time," said the dark-haired woman seriously.

There was a pause. "Then what about the Knight Bus?" asked the first woman half-heartedly.

"I don't much fancy going on something I can't see."

"Oh, come on--"

"Perhaps the train would be the best thing," said the older man suddenly. "Something non-magic, _she _probably wouldn't expect."

"Right," said a man who looked a lot like the first woman. "She'd expect us all to come bursting up there without a care, we're she expecting anything at all. Perhaps it's best if we tread, er, _lightly_."

"But what are we supposed to do with _him_?" asked a sour-looking small woman with a notebook who was sitting right next to Dalen's chair.

The woman who had spoken up first gave the bound Butler a venomous look. "I read," she pronounced finally, "about a Castration Curse once--hey now, no one's becoming a eunuch, I'm only joking! Calm down, Marie, don't look so scandalized. Simon, you're right, nobody cantake a joke around here."

The younger man she had addressed this to shrugged. "Wouldn't the best thing to do be to just Oblivate him and send him on his merry way?"

There was a general nod of agreement and shortly after that Dalen didn't remember how he spent his evening.

The thing she hated about trains, Aurelia thought to herself as she sat wedged in one and tried to focus on the green rushing by outside the window, was that she always seemed to be seated next to a man who enjoyed splaying his legs out wide, fell asleep promptly, and was apparently comfortably unaware that about seven percent of his body was in contact with about 25 percent of hers.

"All right up there?"

Simon was sitting right behind her and seemed to have noticed her predicament, though he didn't seemed overly concerned about it. He was smirking.

"Oh, great," she said through gritted teeth. "Peachy." She twisted her body around in the seat.

Orion was sitting next to him. "We're almost there," he said, though he was deeply immersed in a pamphlet he'd found at one of the train stations and didn't look up to see her looking so discomfited.

Alex was sitting next to Aurelia. He turned around, saw what Orion was reading, and snorted. "Can't believe they have _travel brochures _for this place. _Come watch cows grazing in our idyllic fields and the paint dry on our equally idyllic houses._"

"You should write for them," suggested Nema on Alex's other side, leaning over to join in the conversation.

"Yes, I can see it now on my business card, Alexander Gold, part-time werewolf, part-time writer for travel brochures." He laughed. Unfortunately, all this was loud enough to carry to the rest of the passengers. They all had looked up with questioning stares at the mention of werewolves.

Nema grinned at them and said in a voice a little too loud and carrying to be entirely plausible, "Werewolves? Yes, good song, 'Werewolves of London,' Lon Chaney, all that."

That seemed to satisfy any curious onlookers, but not Aurelia. She leaned over Alex now. "What was that all about? Werewolves and _who?_"

Nema shook her head. "It's just a song by a Muggle musician."

"Really?" Aurelia asked, looking intrigued. "How does it go?"

"Er...I don't remember, I haven't heard it for awhile."

"But what was it called?"

" 'Werewolves of London.' "

"Hmm, well I've got to have a look at that, haven't I?"

"Well, maybe..."

"I can probably get you some sheet music for it when we get home," Alex told Aurelia.

"Really?" she asked eagerly.

"Yes, as long as you get your _head out my face._"

"Oh, right. Sorry." Aurelia sank back into her seat, where the Muggle had now started snoring. She shifted uncomfortably for a few seconds. "Would you like to switch seats?" she asked Alex finally when the man's head had lolled onto her shoulder, not a little piteously.

"That's all right, I quite fine where I am. I've no ambitions to become the Human Pillow, thanks."

"Oh sure, sit there in your nice seat completely non-squished and leave me here to suffer, some friend _you_ are..."

Alex was saved the necessity of replying to this by Orion, who was addressing him and Nema now.

"Either of you ever been hiking?" Orion asked.

"I did a few times," said Nema. "Though usually not in January," she added, who had grown up in Cairo and didn't care for English winters so much.

"The only time I ever went hiking was in the woods once," Alex mused, "and it climaxed in an event I think we can mutually agree was very unpleasant."

"Wh--oh, right. Well, apparently there's a company that leads hikes," Orion explained, indicating the travel brochure, "up this Hill."

"I don't reckon captured werewolves would make the tour," Alex observed sagely.

"Nor do I," replied Orion apparently not noticing Nema and Aurelia snorting, "but it'd be an easy way to get a good look at the area. And I thought maybe you two and Jamie could chat up the people who lead the hikes. See if they've seen anything funny up there."

"Why us?" Nema asked quickly.

"Wizards are limited in their abilities to chat up Muggles," Alex explained to her.

"That's not a very nice thing to say," Nema told him severely, thinking of Remus.

"No, it's true," said Aurelia, who was in an infinitely better mood because her monstrous seatmate had gotten off at last. "Wizards are socially inept. Werewolves doubly so."

"Oh, come on..."

But Nema really didn't feel like arguing. She suspected Aurelia did it to relieve stress, but she, Nema, found it tiresome. So tiresome, in fact, that she fell asleep. When she awoke she discovered that they had entered Little Hangleton.

A/N: Next chapter shall be up soon. I promise on my honor. Or something.

Don't forget to review!


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